Guest Rating Question

[Christina B.]

I just had a large group check out and our cleaner informed us that while most of it was what you'd expect from a large group, the bunk room had two sets of bloodied sheets, imprints on the black out shades, multiple chalk drawings on the garage floor, various towels used to remove makeup, various dirt handprints on the walls, and didn't run the dishwasher. I'm a little surprised because this guest has twelve 5-star reviews on AirBnB.

From reading the collective wisdom of this group, I know that all the above is small stuff. That you wisely build in the costs for replacement linens and towels (also offer black face towels), possibly don't use high-end top-down shades in the Bunk Room (although those black out shades match all the shades in the rest of the house and it's a high-end property), chalk can be brushed, semi-gloss on walls for easier clean-up... and yes, there are clear check-out directions to run the dishwasher provided via an online guest book, a physical guest book, and an email I send regarding check-out the day before they check-out. Let's not go into how gross the hot tub was for just a few days (but we all know that's par for the course with a large group of adults & kids) and yes, I factor the extra for drain & fill although in this case, it needed even more cleaning.

What I'm struggling with is what is the most professional way to reach out to the guest and to write my review? While I know that leaving no review is a possibility, they left us a review very quickly and my guess is it's a 5-star review since I went out of our way to not just answer her questions regarding recommendations for sight-seeing (and provide the links she requested) but to bring in more options (including a playset and keva planks) for the younger group of kids (since I realized most of our games were structured to a slightly older age range).

[Kate Stoermer]

Quote from @Michael Baum:

Hey @Christina B., so this happens from time to time. You get guests that are exceptionally messy. Personally if they were polite with good communication and nothing was stolen or damaged. I usually let it go.

Getting blood and makeup out is easy. Good quality detergents are almost specifically designed for those sorts of stains. It happens fairly regularly at our lake house. Just use a pretreat and go. I had to do the laundry from our last guests and they used the white towels for makeup. Came right out.

I had a group of 8 older women stay and they used each and every white towel to wipe makeup. Think clown and less tasteful. Each pillow case had black streaks from eyeliner or mascara. I was there for that cleaning and I was able to get each and every item clean as a whistle. I think the 8 of them keep Max Factor in business.

So for preventative measures will help. For example, microfiber sheets for kids beds. They don't care about thread count and they are much easier to clean than anything with cotton.

For adult beds, I only use a 70/30 cotton/poly blend sheet in white and a percale weave. They are a crisper and don't set stains as easily. Sateen weave has a tendency to trap stains and they pill up over time. I have the Kohl's Big One percale sheets with a 250 TC. Nothing fancy and easy to replace as needed. So far all but a few pillowcases have survived for 7 years of guests. 

Provide makeup removal washcloths. Embroider them with MAKEUP. My wife embroiders stuff so it was easy for us. You could try a new hobby!

No way I would put fancy shades in any STR. I am changing out the older cellular shades in our place with standard 2" Levelor blinds from Lowe's. They are inexpensive and they trim to fit. Easy to install. They look good and are easy to clean.

I actually text the check out instructions to each and every guest in addition to the copy on the fridge. Makes sure they get it and understand.

AirBNB won't give you anything for extra cleaning etc IMHO. Unless there is actual damage, they pretty much will tell you it is the cost of doing business.

The bottom line is you might want to make some changes to the house to help make it easier to mitigate some things.

In the end, you do all you can, but you will get a bad guest from time to time where they leave a complete mess.

I did recently get Airbnb reimbursement for extra cleaning. It's possible.