I'm on the fence about a rental. A young woman rented my house for a weekend in May (about 7 weeks from now). She included this message with her rental... "Hi, I'm booking your place for my family from May 12th to 14th, as they are coming for my graduation. Thank you."
Several yellow flags started waving simultaneous...
1. She's renting it for her family (not for herself);
2. College graduation (Party!?);
3. She's using a pseudonym on her Airbnb profile;
4. She has no positive reviews (she also has no negative reviews).
I use "Instant Booking" with a requirement for basic identity verification (phone, email, photo, payment info). The phone number that I see when I check the booking confirmation is a Swiss phone number. When I call it it goes directly to a voicemail box.
Somehow I can't get the vision out of my head of people doing keg stands in my living room and beer pong in the kitchen.
Airbnb suggested that I message the guest to learn more about who will be staying at my house. My thought is that if I start probing with "Who? What? Why?" questions I'm just going to be setting myself up for a potentially adversarial relationship with a renter.
Apparently I'm allowed 3 discretionary cancellations of Instant Book reservations. I'm tempted to use one in this instance, but would love to get input from anyone who might help me figure out how to approach the Guest without coming across as ogre.
advTHANKSacne,
Joe
P.S. Complicating this is that I myself will be out of country when this rental occurs and will have limited ability to monitor what's happening.