.
As we are reading about so many bad guests so often, here's an exact opposite story.
Right now I have a group of guests inhouse, they have come here for the 5th time in a row.
It's a couple in their early 60ies, her name is Lisa and his name is Sepp. They brought their 2 children with their partners. Also they brought a dog, Sunny by the name. For Sunny they brought 2 large blankets so that the dog would not ruin my couch.
I tried to upload a picture of this dog as a proof, but it doesn't work.
As a replacement here my most recent conversation with Sunny:
Sunny, say hello to all the airbnb hosts out there
Sunny: Woof
Sepp likes to have a glass of red wine now and then. Lisa has a cleaning addiction. It's not that she would complain that it's not clean enough in here, no, she herself is cleaning my place all of the time. She always runs around with a rag cleaning the table, the floor, all corners and what have You. (No joke!)
During the day they are enjoying the patio, the pool, the barbequecottage, reading books, playing games and having a good time. At 5pm they walk the dog, when they're done with it I usually come home and we sit together having a chat.
I heaven't heard about a single problem ever since they checked in.
Very different from these people was a group that I hosted last summer.
There were problems everywhere.
They complained about the stairs being too steep, matresses being too soft (no surprise if You weigh 300 lbs), toilet flush upstairs too loud, toilet flush downstriars not enough water pressure, a lightbulb on my candelabres not working (one out of 12), doors squeaking and the list goes on.
Now, how can it be, that one group of guests are having the holliday of their lifetime and another group has nothing but problems, as it is always the same house. Well, it's not the house, it's the people.
There are negative people out there who always complain about everything, but there also are people that aren't that negative but they are judging their place to stay based on the expectations they have. It doesn't matter if our listing description and our pictures clearly indicate, that their expectations can never be met, they still want the place to be they think it should be.
Obvouisly we cannot change people as they are as they are. But this would not be a problem, if there wasn't this airbnb rating system.
If we had a normal, standard, down to earth rating system ranging from 1* to 5*, the average value of course would be 3*. If we said, 3* is the average and ok, 4* is good and 5* is very good, then there would be not problem at all. Because if You get one 1* review You can easily make up for that with one single 5* review and You are back to the ok 3* average.
But we have something else. The required average is 4.7* minimum, below You may even get delisted, and You need 18 five* reviews to make up for one 1* review.
The problem with bad guests and their bad reviews are not the guests and their reviews, but the terms of the rating system imposed by our partner airbnb.
