All Forum Posts by: James R.

Thanks for your insight, Kate! 

For those of you who have used Boostly.co.uk, what do you think?  

Hey Y'all.  At the time that you get a long-stay booking, screenshot your cancellation policy with the acceptance of that booking. 

Vrbo just refunded a guest 100%.  I showed them the screenshot of my cancellation policy at the time that the guest booked (it has remained Firm and always has been Firm) and got a 50% payout.  Mysteriously, my cancellation policy was Moderate on the platform.  Look at your cancellation policies frequently, because the platforms change them to suit guests demands.  

Sneaky, sneaky these platforms are.  Protect yourself.  

Unless this family produced a photo, I think that they fabricated the whole thing, in order to get a free stay.  

I've been a host 15 years and Airbnb's guest caliber has dropped significantly.  We only allow guests with at least 8 previous 5-star reviews to book our property and we give them a slight discount for being frequent good users of the platform.  You might think that this standard would result in fewer bookings, but it hasn't and we have far fewer complaints and headaches.  

Airbnb has really been getting into our business, with their constant demands, so much that the platform has now become a hurdle to our business and our hospitality goals.  We are hoping that someone out there will invent a replacement for Airbnb, which will be like hosting was 10 years ago, but we are not holding our breath. 

Our most memorable, fake story to get a free stay, was from a group of guys.  A VRBO guest, mind you, but nevertheless.  The guy, who booked the house for the group, demanded a 50% refund, because he claimed that the showerhead came loose and struck him on the head.  He felt that he didn't need to call for an ambulance and seek medical attention, though.

Me: Yeah, okay.  

Thinking that we would be alarmed and grant him the 50% refund, I went into scammer guest mode and told him that he broke the showerhead and that we would be charging him for a new one and the cost to have a plumber install it.  He wrote that he was going to give us a bad review and I replied, "Go for it.  We are going to do the same".  Never heard a peep out of him, after that.  

This subject is one of my Airbnb pet peeves.  Let's say guests put a hole in a door.  You contact the guests, they say, "It was already like that.  We didn't do it."  You call Airbnb to file a claim through Aircover.  Your guest writes a bad review to the tune of bathrooms were dirty, lots of noise, not enough toilet paper, one star (they do this because they think that you are going to write them a bad review). You call Airbnb and say that none of this about your property is accurate. Because the guest didn't write something like, "The host tried to get us to pay for damages that we didn't do" it won't be retaliation and the review will not be taken down.  So, you are really taking a big risk by reporting damages, which is EXACTLY what Airbnb wants.  Airbnb is 80% support for guests and 20% support for hosts.  I try to avoid calling Airbnb customer service for anything, which again is EXACTLY want Airbnb wants.  

Thanks to everyone who provided recommendations.

We decided to go with NoiseAware. 

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking into purchasing a remote noise monitoring device.

Any suggestions?  

Thanks in advance. 

Hi Christina.  Thank you for your question and for your compliment.  Our Frequent Users of Airbnb or VRBO discount was launched one year ago and because Airbnb is heavily based on reviews of both guests and hosts, we set the bar higher.  VRBO does not really rely on reviews of guests.  Most users of VRBO have one single 5-star review, thus our threshold is lower.  Most - 90% of VRBO requests, do not get the discount, but to be fair, we offer the discount on both platforms.

Believe it or not, we get requests from Airbnb users with upwards of 40+ 5-star reviews.  They like the fact that we reward frequent users of the platform. 

In our market (New Orleans) cemetery tours are very popular.  Our rental is near a very famous one, so we added a free cemetery tour to our listing, if a guest books one month in advance.  This has actually increased our bookings.  Guests love the tour.  Yours-truly gets to conduct it and we always get rave reviews about it.  

We also look for guests with previous 5-star reviews, of course.  We offer a discount to frequent uses of Airbnb (15+ 5-star reviews) and VRBO (5+ 5-star reviews).  Almost 60% percent of our bookings are with guests with 15+ previous 5-star reviews on Airbnb.