How tough are you on guests for reviews?

[Sean Wilt]

How tough are y'all non guests that leave the home a bit of a mess?  We've rented our personal residence out a number of times and each time the home has been pretty spotless on our return.  We just purchased a full time rental at the beach though and we have just finished our third guest.  Seems like these guests have been not quite so considerate.  Perhaps as they know it's a full time rental vs. our personal home?

Anyway, our cleaning lady just sent me a note ranking the last guests as a 6 of 10.  toothpaste spit all over the bathroom faucets, and some sort of substance -- guessing food smeared all over the bathroom counter. They also removed a picture from the wall in one of the bedrooms and set it on the floor.

My question is, this does not seem TOOO bad, but would you rate this a 5 star?  I know on AirBnb, they won't see our review until they post theirs so no real worry that a bad reveiw would bias their review of us.  Their communication was good througout and all in all, had been good guests.  I'm surprised at the condition they left the home.

What do you think?

[Corby Goade]

We use AirBnb and vacation rentals all of the time, I have a family of five, three kids six and under. We always follow whatever checkout guidelines are included in the instructions and be sure to do simple things like take out the trash, strip beds, etc, even if they aren't on the list. That said, when I use a vacation rental and am paying a $75 cleaning fee, you wouldn't catch me scrubbing the mirror and faucets if my kids got some toothpaste spittle on them- that's what the cleaning fee is for. As a PM, I wouldn't leave a negative review unless house rules were maliciously broken or if items in the house were broken or missing.