I actually spoke to another host last night and he gave me some information about the powers that public security officers have in my city, as in how they are allowed to ticket people for noise infractions. He's also in a condo building and has similar concerns, so he gave me his write-up and I modified it to fit my listing. I'm not going to post it here, but if you go to my rules section, on my listing, you'll see it there. It's strongly worded, but as he told me last night, we need to be honest about possible consequences of partying behaviour.
The problem is that I live in a building where residents of two units--ie two couples--actually stopped renting condos that were in buildings where they believed a lot of short term rentals were in operation. I only have the one resident's word for it, but he told me that he believed several units were like that and that the indoor swimming pool became virtually unusable at times because of all the children and unsupervised teens in the building. (The building only had studio and one bedroom condos, so most were owned by single people or couples.) There's no pool here, and there are a lot of kids so families are a great fit for me, but it's groups of partyers that I worry about, especially with my city's well-known night club scene.
I did allow a group of five high school girls to be booked in by one girl's mother. But the only reason I allowed it--she asked in advance--was because the mother herself was an Airbnb host and she promised me that the girls were good and would behave. I was on holiday, but asked another resident to meet and greet and let them know he was there to help. When I got back, he, another resident, and my cleaner, all told me it had been a bad idea. So renting to very young people can be a problem.
The thing is, if I were a parent, I would actually want my kids to go to a hotel where there are security cameras and people around 24/7 to help if there's an emergency. I wouldn't want them in an apartment in a strange city where they may not know who to contact for help. In that sense, Airbnb IS better for more independent travelers, but I suppose the savings are what convince people that it's okay. The fact is that if six people share the cost of my condo, it's cheaper than a hostel. So that's my problem.
At any rate, I've used this other host's write up (but as I say, in modified form) and apparently, in his conversations with public security officers, he was surprised to learn that they have the power to issue personalized tickets, which are handed to residents (or in my case, guests) and are not left for hosts to reclaim via the damage deposit. He told me that getting photographs of each guest's ID makes writing the tickets easier. I've taken his advice and that's made me feel a lot better.
