I saw a post saying guests could pull up their star ratings on the app/website. I am a host and a guest and I’m curious what mine is, but I can’t find that functionality. Apparently it was in profile info?
TLDR - is a bad review really the end of the world? Honest question.
My place is a large 1850s farmhouse and we list it on Airbnb to help cover its expenses as it’s the central farmhouse of our working 300+ acre farm and it’s too expensive and huge for us to actually live in it, lol. We’ve had really good reviews and guests usually love it, so we have a 4.94/guest favorite badge and top the listings of local homes.
To be perfectly frank, cleanliness has always been our weak point. The house is enormous, it takes literally 6-8 hours to fully vacuum, we battle insects and occasionally mice, and it’s just…an old house. Beautiful, but old. We’re in a really rural area so while we occasionally have help it’s really just me cleaning and maintaining it. The overwhelming majority of our guests love the place so much they’re usually very forgiving but you can see on our reviews that we have a 4 star for cleanliness, and I’ve accepted that. This place is not my full time job nor my primary business.
(It also has a pool. I hate that thing. It takes so much time and money to maintain, but guests looooove it. So much so that I’ll focus on the pool before I worry about slightly dusty floors.)
Welp, finally run into our nightmare clean freak guests, and they’ve booked the place for a month. They moved in and immediately gave the place the deepest clean it’s ever seen and proceeded to complain about literally everything. The primary booker seems to potentially have clinical OCD as she was literally shaking while telling me how horrible the house is. She told me she spent an entire night (like did not sleep) scrubbing the wainscoting of the entire 6 bedroom house. They also gave me a long lecture on the repairs the house needs and indicated that I need more support maintaining the house. Specifically, she told me to “work out your issues with your siblings” in order to keep the house up. She was really jumping to many conclusions…I have one sibling and they are deceased.
I initially was going to offer them a refund and encourage them to find another place, but my husband refused. I said worst case Airbnb refunds them, best case they leave a godawful review. He said he wants a bad review to weed out guests that aren’t a good fit for our place.
That got me to thinking. I suppose it could tank our listing, but he does have a point…when I am booking as a guest I actively avoid places that are reviewed as being squeaky clean, because I find those hosts are insane with complicated checkout requirements, and you have to practically scrub the floors with a toothbrush before you leave. By comparison, I just tell my guests to leave the beds they’ve used unmade.
Is it worth weathering this one bad review?
Is this a French rose (Rosa Gallica?), Rosa rugosa or Rosa Virginiana (the US native)?
These have been growing wild on the edge of my yard for the last couple of years and I’ve always liked the way they look and smell. I’ve been coaxing them into my yard and finally this year I’ve got them set up in a bed and mulched them and basically treated them as a VIP. I’ve always wanted roses but have been too chicken to go out and buy them, so I think this is fantastic. But I’ve got conflicting answers on what they are. Google sucks nowadays so it wasn’t super easy to tell.
my picture this plant app (I know I heard it’s a scam, but I accidentally subbed so I use it now) says French rose, and it does smell nice…
one neighbor said this is Rosa rugosa and apparently it’s very annoying and invasive? Have I done something I’ll regret?!
another neighbor is insisting this is a native wild rose, but I’m fairly certain she’s wrong. Rosa Virginiana looks pretty different, I think?
Also I think another neighbor two houses over has this same rose on the side of their house. Wondering if this got here because of a wayward bird taking rosehips from that plant.