I love using Airbnb.
From when I first discovered it back in 2015, Airbnb has been my go-to when it comes to booking my accommodations.
You can usually find places to stay for much cheaper on Airbnb than you would a hotel and you get so much more bang for your buck.
You can book an entire house or an entire apartment or you can book a single room, and usually with access to a kitchen.
That being said I have had my fair share of Airbnb disasters.
I became a host for Airbnb a few years ago and decided to rent out the second bedroom in my apartment.
I’d weighed the pros and cons and I figured I’d used the service so many times before and thought it could be a cool venture.
You know, make some extra money on the side to help out with rent, meet some people who are visiting the area.
It seemed like a great idea.
And it was.
But with the great usually come the not so great.
Today, I’m going to highlight 5 of my Airbnb disasters I’ve experienced these last few years….
Well truthfully, looking back at all my stays and my hosted stays, there really are only 5.
I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.
When I first became a host, I posted my apartment and literally got a booking within the first few days. I was super excited and the 3-day booking went really well.
I hosted a couple more people before coming into contact with my first disaster.
So, let’s get into this.
These are my top 5 worst airbnb experiences as a host
In this post
I got locked out of my apartment for the night.
“Whoa, how did that even happen?” you might be wondering.
Well, I have 3 locks on my door.
Two of them came with the apartment, but I only have a key for one of them.
The 3rd lock is a simple latch lock that I added when I moved in that I only use when I know everyone is in for the night.
When I have guests, I normally don’t touch it and I let guests know upon arrival which lock to use.
I never thought it would be a problem as I’d already hosted a few guests and never encountered any issues.
However, this one couple from out of town clearly forgot. I came home after a long day at work, simply wanting my bed only to find that when I put my key in the door and unlocked it, the door still wouldn’t open.
Right away I knew the issue and thought “Noooo”.
It was late and I was tired and I didn’t know if my guests were still awake or not. Still, I tried knocking on the door, phoning them and messaging them through the app to no avail.
Then I took to knocking as loud as I could but still trying to keep it down a little as not to wake my neighbors.
Still nothing.
Putting care aside, I started banging on the door to try to get the attention of my guests inside who I was sure couldn’t really be sleeping that deep, but still no answer.
After a while, I gave up and called my sister to see if she could pick me up so I could crash on her couch for the night.
So that same couple that locked me out of my own house for the night…well they did more than just that.
Brace yourselves for this one.
After checking out, I went into the room to clean up, change the sheets, sweep, mop and all that good stuff and I noticed they didn’t exactly leave the room in great shape.
The first thing I noticed was the stringy lace underwear draped on the bedpost and thought “um…okay”…
Then I noticed the blood.
On the edge of the pillowcase. And again, I thought, “Nooooo”.
When I went to take the sheets off the bed, I noticed more blood, but not just on the sheets, on the blanket as well.
And then I saw my kitchen towel.
These two had the nerve to take my towel from the kitchen and use it to try and cover up the big bloodstain they had left on my sheets from having intercourse while homegirl was on her period.
I had to take a step back and be like, “do people really do this sh@t”?!?
That’s just nasty.
In a stranger’s house on their sheets. That’s downright disrespectful.
I didn’t even think about trying to salvage the sheets, I took it as a loss and tossed them in the garbage. Then I proceeded to Lysol EVERYTHING down and I left an extremely truthful and detailed review.
Speaking of intercourse….
In August of last year, I had a single girl come to stay with me for 3 nights. She had come up from the states to celebrate Caribana.
She seemed like a very nice girl, very polite.
Only one night, I was fast asleep as I had to be up early in the morning for work.
During the summers, I work 2 jobs Monday through Friday and then only one of them on the weekends. So my days are super long and my weeks even longer.
I was awoken around 2 or 3 in the morning to loud sounds of sex.
At first, I thought it was a dream, but then I realized that “Nope, this was really happening”. They weren’t even trying to be quiet, I was so shocked.
This girl had brought a complete stranger into my house and they were having very loud sex in the room right next to mine.
I proceeded to bang on the wall signaling for them to shut the f*** up as I didn’t even want to deal with that whole situation right then. I was tired and just wanted to sleep.
I could hear the two of them go quiet and then the guy burst out laughing.
I thought that since they knew I had heard that they would stop, but nope.
They clearly did not care.
The noise started back up, I was shooketh, I kid you not.
I covered my head with the pillow and willed myself back to sleep.
When I woke in the morning, I saw that homie (the strange man that was in my house) had left sometime early in the morning before me (I wake up at 6:30 am).
Sure enough, when I got home, I saw that my guest had left and checked out early.
If I were her, I wouldn’t have wanted to see me either.
You better believe I left her a very starkly and truthful review.
I’ll just say I’d be surprised if she got accepted to stay in another Airbnb after that.
I was unable to use my own bathroom for hours on end
I had this one chick stay with me for a prolonged period of time.
I noticed she loved spending time in the bathroom and I was not here for it.
Whenever I have guests over, I make sure not to be in the washroom for long periods of time so that if they need to use it, they don’t have to wait.
I take quick showers and I do my hair in my bedroom as that normally takes a good amount of time.
This girl, however, didn’t seem to have any qualms about the time she spent in the bathroom.
I would get home from work and wouldn’t be able to go pee for over an hour.
I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I had to resort to peeing in a bucket a time or two.
*Covering my face in embarrassment”
She said she needed to take a few showers a day, I didn’t question it as it’s none of my business, but damn, you ain’t the only one living here chick.
I had a girl stay with me who couldn’t handle scents.
I didn’t think anything big of it cause my mom is the same way, plus I don’t have too many scented things in my apartment. I told her before she stayed with me that I do burn a candle on occasion, but it’s pretty rare.
This girl stayed with me over the Christmas holidays and I had Christmas scented candles I kept on display on my dining room table. Still, I made an effort not to light them as I knew she was sensitive to scents.
The one time I did burn a candle was when her scent started overtaking my apartment and I didn’t like it at all.
You know when you open a bottle of vitamins and it has that weird smell, well her scent was exactly like that.
She usually stayed in her room for prolonged periods of time, so I decided to burn it for a while. I went downstairs to check my mailbox and when I came back, I noticed she had snubbed it out.
Even though it was kinda annoying, I didn’t say anything because the scent of the candle had already done its job.
When she “checked out” and I went in to clean the room, I noticed she’d taped over ALL the vents in the room, around the windows, and around the door to keep the “weird” scents from coming into the room.
I was pretty shocked to see the lengths she had gone to keep the so-called scents out.
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And there you have it, the not so good, the bad, and the ugly.
Despite all these mishaps and misfortunes, I still think Airbnb is the way to go.
Personally I decided to take a break from hosting because all the things that happened were just one too many and I didn’t want to share my space with strangers anymore
I would definitely consider hosting again in the future, but only if I wasn’t sharing the space with guests. I’m pretty much over that now.
However, I do continue to use Airbnb when booking stays when I’m traveling.
I totally think it’s the way to go 99 percent of the time.
I treat the spaces I enter with respect the way I would treat my own apartment.
It’s just unfortunate not everyone has those same thoughts.
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If you’ve never used Airbnb before, don’t let this deter you. It is seriously my go-to when booking my stays.
I’ve never had issues at any of the places I’ve stayed at (except that one time) but one isolated case definitely doesn’t change how I feel about this service.
If you want to try Airbnb for yourself, click here and get $45CAD off your first booking and another $17 CAD towards your first Airbnb experience!
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If you have used Airbnb yourself, tell me about it!
Have you had any hosting disasters or have you stayed with a host before and there was some weird stuff going on?
I’m curious to know if I’m just unlucky with the people I’ve hosted or if I’m not the only one and others have experienced some crappy situations too.
Until next time, stay blessed ♡
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Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even if you wish they were.