I rented my villa in Marbella, Spain to a guest from Ireland. He informed me his family were arriving the following day. Subsequently I found out that six or more young guys turned up and in the week they were in my house, they destroyed it. Airbnb has been ‘looking into this’ for five weeks now. They blocked two toilets with whole rolls of toilet paper, ripped a door off the hinges, broke my washing machine, made cigarette burns on my brand new couches, vomited on the bed and walls and around the toilet, made marks all over the walls, and somehow got them wet. I had to employ three cleaning ladies for eight hours each, fix the toilets and door, and purchase new linen, towels, and glasses for what wasn’t broken or thrown out. I’m not sure how many people were sleeping on the bed but the supporting boards were also broken and this was a €3000 bed. The damage and costs equate to around €10,000. At check out, when we were supposed to meet, they vacated the premises and locked me out of the house without meeting me or giving me the keys back. I had to employ a locksmith on a Sunday to change my locks. It has caused me a lot of stress and my house is ruined.
Airbnb claims to have 1000000$ host protection insurance. Though when something like this happens they are just “looking into this” and ignore you. I know what I am talking about. Trust me
I agree with Steve.
I do not condone such destructive behaviour at all but this is the risk you take when welcoming strangers into your premises. I’ve seen how much money one can make off of AirBnB, so then I think you can also take out special insurance for these sorts of circumstances; if you then end up with fairly little actual profit or you need to raise your prices, welcome to running an actual hotel! I think most AirBnB hosts are trying to make a quick buck (I wonder how many report their earnings to the tax office!?!) but there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
When people are letting out to tenants on a longer term basis, they often scan the tenants by talking to previous lettings agents/land lords, asking for a deposit (6 weeks’ rent) and will sign contracts protecting the owner from damages by the tenant. You don’t have that with AirBnB so you risk becoming the victim of bad people.
Hotels are expensive because they have to take out special insurances, licenses and have professional staff. You now know why this is important.
That’s tragic. BUT when you’re a hotel you accept those risks and have your OWN insurance that covers this.