Encroaching on personal space - hints and tips?

[Vanessa830]

So me and my boyfriend have been hosting for about 3 months now, we advertise one bedroom in our house where we live, shared bathroom and living spaces. Luckily our guests have usually been out of the house for the evening or stayed in their bedroom doing work or on their laptop etc. The room has a radio and a television with Netflix and catchup tv, films, etc, and there is WiFi. 

Recently we have had a guest for three consecutive nights during the week for work purposes. It is his first time being a guest with air bnb and has never hosted. So things have became a bit awkward because he spends his evenings in the living room with me and my boyfriend, and it is difficult to ask him to leave so we can spend some alone time together. When my boyfriend was working late one evening I found myself giving him the remote and pretending I don't want to watch anything without my other half or I will be one episode ahead of him (when really I could've easily found something I wanted to watch but would have been embarrassed exposing my air bnb guest to Gilmore Girls). 

Me and my boyfriend now eat at the table in the dining room just to have some alone time (when usually we put the tv on as we're addicted to stranger things at the moment).

How do we rectify this without making things awkward or offending our guest? He has booked the next two weeks and his job is a long term booking, my other half quite rightly pointed out that if this carries on we won't get any time just the two of us, however we need the money and his booking. We'd just rather he stayed in his room. Is that too much to ask?

[Emiel1]

@Vanessa830 

Your listing mentions clearly the livingroom and diningroom are shared with the guests. So if you do not want guests around in these spaces, remove this feature (or one of them) from the listing. The guests are offered to use this spaces, allthough shared with you both, and there is not a limitation set (maybe consider this in future).

Best regards,

Emiel

[Anonymous]

@Vanessa830  Don't you and your partner have your own room you can go to if you'd rather be alone? Or somewhere outside of the house?

For future bookings you can establish limitations on the use of the shared areas. But if they were offered at the time this booking was confirmed, it would be against the terms of your agreement to deny him access. He's not "encroaching" on your space, he is making use of the facilities that he paid for. 

That said, you reserve the right to choose the TV show you want to watch, and he can choose to go to his room if he prefers a different one. And you're not obliged to include him in all your meals and private conversations. But asking him to "just stay in his room" when your offer advertised shared living spaces would be incredibly poor hospitality.

[Kelly149]

@Vanessa830 Yes, it’s too much to ask. Go to your room or a cafe or on a walk around the block. Count the money in your head while you do this. I hope it passes quickly

[Susan151]

@Vanessa830  This guest is not encroaching on your personal space at all. You sold it via AirBNB based on your narrative in your listing. 

Going forward, you might want to rethink what you are selling; what you can live with and what you can not live with. Can you build a "private" room with TV for you and your boyfriend? Can you fit a TV in the guest room so that they can watch tv there? Or maybe, you simply don't want to share those rooms, in which case the amount you can ask for per night might need to be adjusted.

This is part of determining what kind of host you want to be. What can you live with? What can't you live with? And then adjust your listing to match.

[Mark116]

@Vanessa830  Well, you say it's a shared space, and it's the luck of the draw whether you will get guests who like to hang out in the space or not, but no you can't tell him to stay in his room.  I'd say you will have to suck it up in this case, if you want to put some limits on the 'shared spaces' i.e. something like open to guests during XX hours, I guess you could do that.  If you don't want guest who are spending time in the apartment you might consider not doing longer term rentals, which are by their nature going to attract people who have a more set schedule, not tourists who are out all the time.

[Jerry261]

Only host investment properties not your home. If you treat customer like family... they become family

[Sarah977]

@Vanessa830  You are offering a shared home listing, and you have a guest who obviously wants to avail himself of that situation. If you aren't the kind of person who wants to engage with guests, you should remove the use of the living room from your listing. The original promotion of Airbnb was "Live like local". That means some guests actually want that- they're lonely in a new place, and want some interaction with their hosts. 

You can't have it every which way- if you want to host, want the money, and want to share your home, you can't expect guests to just be in their room or out all day and evening. Some guests are quite private, and some want company, some aren't very good on picking up on when they may be overusing the common spaces. If you can't roll with those types, then make it clear in your listing that the living room isn't shared or hole up in your room with your boyfriend if you get guests like this.