r/airbnb_hosts

Airbnb Hosts, I Need Some Advice! 😂

We're still fairly new to hosting and learning as we go!

We currently have some workers who booked for two weeks and needed to extend for another two weeks.

Our discounts are set at 10% for 7+ nights and 30% for 28+ nights. (Yes, I know that 30% is generous! We're learning! 😂😂)

The guests said Airbnb wouldn't allow them to make a new reservation, only extend their current one.

Now it appears they're getting the 30% monthly discount on the additional two weeks, making those two weeks significantly cheaper than the first two.

My questions:

Is this normal when guests extend a reservation to 28+ nights?

How can I prevent such a large discount from being applied to an extension in the future?

Is there a way to adjust the price of an extension without affecting the original reservation?

I definitely want to encourage longer stays, but I also don't want to leave too much money on the table!

Experienced hosts, what would you recommend? I'm all ears! 😊

I’m struggling with whether or not to go all in on letting this guest have it. I can’t post the pictures in here it seems but she took our blow dryer, plugged it in, put it in the bed under the covers and turned it on like it was a personal bed heater. It was still in the bed when I came to collect the linens. In addition to this, she was really needy and annoying but I generally take that with a grain of salt. She followed none of our checkout instructions and even left our gate unlocked. Where do I draw the line here?? Should I light her up?

Edit/additional info: when I say “light her up” I am being hyperbolic. I’m not going to ruin her life. 2-3 star review.

Many people are saying I can’t prove that’s what she used the blow dryer for and admittedly this is true. I messaged her the following: “Aloha ****, I hope you had a safe trip to your next destination! I just wanted to ask because I noticed the blow dryer in the bed, were you cold at night?” We’ll see what she says.

People saying I’m obviously irresponsible for not having heating: we’re in Hawaii. Nobody has heating here unless they live at a super high elevation and our cabin is at about 1500 ft. We provide extra blankets and mention that in both our welcome letter and our listing info, neither of which she read.

EDIT AGAIN: actually, I basically CAN prove it’s what she was doing! We have remote monitoring for our off grid solar setup that tracks energy usage, and when guests go to bed, it drops to basically nothing. This guest had random spikes in energy usage of 1200 watts at a time scattered throughout the night. Unless she was using the electric kettle at random times all night, she was running the blow dryer.

Title says it all. The scheme has been laid out here before. Guest checks in, takes photos of petty issues or maybe a few moderate ones at best. Demands absurd refund, host gives in to not get a bad review.

Just had an iteration of this. Guest took photos of stains on basement rugs. In fairness, there were a few spots that were unsightly, although this is more from a bad design choice on my part (too light of color) and years of shoes walking over and staining them. These types of stains do not come out, even with me having them steamed regularly.

I offer to refund half cleaning fee and send a cleaner. Guest refuses and demands 50% refund. I say no, I’ll refund if you decide to leave. Guest accepted, left and got their money back.

Lo and behold, I still get a 3 star review. Guest mentioned in review that house is older inside than it looks in the photos. The house is not modern- kitchen cabinets and sink are old, but does have fresh paint, floors and updated bathrooms. In hindsight I think the guest was disappointed that she booked a semi dated place and used the rugs as a proxy for a refund.

Moving forward, I’ve gotten rid of the rugs that can’t be revived and will do an extra cleaning monthly from my backup cleaner who will focus on problem areas. Given that, no more giving in with generosity to keep the peace- I will offer a refund of the cleaning fee at best and send someone over, and if they refuse that I will tell them to call customer support. Done with it!

TLDR: Don’t give refunds to save a review, they will still give you a bad one anyway. Petty cleaning complaints could be a proxy for them being disappointed with another aspect of your property that they overlooked in your listing when they booked.

My airbnb is in the basement of my house, they have a separate entrance on the side and I live upstairs. Last night I had guests who booked for one night. They checked in in the afternoon and they left for the evening. When they came back at 4 am, unfortunately the lock glitched and would not open. They tried many times before waking me up by knocking on my door. Overall they were stuck outside for 15 minutes before i unlocked it for them.

What reasonable compensation should i offer? I already pushed the checkout from 10 to 12h.

They paid 165$.

Hello hosts!

I have a guest checking in tomorrow. Yesterday I sent the confirmation message which is confirming their guest count, pet count, and bed count.

The guest responded that they are a couple, and that their daughter who lives close will be bringing her Australian Shepard over, but they will not be staying the night.

For dog owners I use couch covers and have a cleaning fee because of the dirt that dogs track in.

They are staying for 9 days so I am hesitant to allow a dog over at all. I'm worried that they might leave it alone while they go out or if they come over every day that the house will be smelling like wet dog and require a deep cleaning. It is the rainy season here so every dog just leaves that smell in my place.

What would you guys say as a response to their message? I am thinking about saying that the pet fee will be applied if a dog enters the home, regardless of if they stay or not.

Edit: I sent a message saying that I don't allow visiting pets unless the pet cleaning fee has been paid. I said I would send over the pet fee request if they would like to pay before check in so that their daughters dog can visit without hassle.

They said "that's fair and well stated" then proceeded to say they would let me know if the dog comes in the house.

So that was easy! Thank you all for your helpful and productive comments and helping this situation unfold so effortlessly!

When AirBnB was new and wanted to build out their network they focused their priorities on favoring the hosts with low 3% host fees high incentives to refer hosts. Now that their network is already built they are shifting their business model to favoring the guests. They are siding with guests on hosts conflicts, being sticky on hosts coverage and shift their 14% AirBnB fees to hosts. Subsequently hosts increasingly have an incentive to court favorable repeat guests to a direct payment model.🤷‍♂️

Anyone else feeling squeezed with Airbnb pricing lately?
My bookings have dropped, which I’m assuming is partly slow season. I’ve raised my prices because electricity and other costs have gone up, but somehow my actual earnings still feel worse.
I even turned on the discount for highly rated guests just to stay competitive and hopefully get a little more favour in Airbnb’s search.
Meanwhile, my competitors haven’t budged. There’s one lady nearby charging dirt cheap and I genuinely don’t know how the hell she’s surviving 🥲🥲
With Airbnb now making the host eat the service fee too, it feels like I’m raising prices just to earn even less than what I used to.

Airbnb really needs to adjust something.

Hi everyone—I’m looking for strategic advice from veteran hosts or Superhosts who have successfully fought and appealed an unfair support decision.
The Situation:
Booking & Location: 28-day mid-term booking in Palm Springs during 100°F heat. Because of Palm Springs’ strict 36-booking annual cap (Ordinance 2075), long-term stays are critical to our business strategy.
The Claim: The guest complained mid-stay that our brand-new HVAC unit was "too loud" to sleep and filed a claim to cancel the remainder of the reservation with a full refund.
On-Site Inspection: My house manager went out immediately, conducted a thorough walkthrough, and captured video showing the brand-new unit operating at standard noise levels with zero clanging, banging, or defect. The AC is fully functional and cooling properly.
The Airbnb Support Issue:
Airbnb unilaterally cancelled the reservation over my refusal, overriding my strict cancellation policy without verifying if an amenity was actually defective.
I was initially told I’d receive a partial payout for nights stayed, but as I requested to escalate and submit host video evidence, support closed/reopened cases and drastically slashed the payout further (down to ~$780).
Case managers have either refused to review host video uploads or reported link playback issues on their end, ignoring on-site proof that the amenity works.
Where I Need Advice:
Escalation Path: Since front-line phone support and standard case managers are giving conflicting answers and lowering payouts upon escalation, what is the most effective channel to reach a supervisor or specialized team ?
Evidentiary Standard: Has anyone successfully overturned a payout adjustment when guest complaints were purely subjective (like AC fan sound) rather than a broken/non-functional system? How did you present your proof?
Protecting Account Health: Is there any legitimate risk of listing penalization simply for disputing an incorrect decision through official resolution channels?
I’ve been a Superhost for 4 years with multiple properties, but this handling feels like a major departure from standard policy. Any insights or proven tactics would be greatly appreciated.

I have a spare room in my house I'm thinking about using air bnb to make some money from. Any tips? Would love to hear from people who do this? I'm assuming I need some sort of insurance? Cheers

A little back story here. I lived in this house for about 7 years and in my house I had an art room. I threw paint all over the walls and used the room for all my painting/music stuff. I’ve since moved out of the house and currently renovating the old one to rent it out. I’m doing new floors and all that jazz but I’d love to keep the walls. I’ll likely give this house to my son when he reaches adult age and I think that’d be a pretty cool piece of the self to hold on to.

Right now, I’m torn between the idea of tearing it all out to make it a fresh, normal rental or just leaning into the idea of having an art house. Maybe I put the floors and baseboards down to make it look a little more finished and add supplies in the room with some Bob Ross type videos to make it part of the experience. Cheap paint, cheap floors, no worries about mess. The rest of the house is pretty normal. I’d probably want to hang a lot of art on the walls of the rest of the house but no weird paint, leave the piano in the main room for people to play with and maybe a cheap guitar that I don’t care about if it gets damaged.

I am located in northern Kentucky, specifically Falmouth. It’s a pretty small town that has just enough close to us that there are a couple VRBO’s or AB&B’s but I don’t know that the demographic will appreciate the art house vibe. I have a picture on another post If you care to see it but this subreddit does not allow photos.

Hi there- I’ve been hosting for some time now but am having a hard time adjusting to the new pricing. I didn’t save payout numbers from past dates. Anyone else having an issue with this?

This has been our first year as hosts and we’ve learned a lot.

We have a full house setup next door to our own home. It’s two bedroomed with its own toilet and shower, and a large open plan living, dining and kitchen area.

We live in a very quiet tourist town that appeals mainly to families with young kids and we tried to lean into that a little bit.

Here are a few things we’ve learned.

- Reviews have a big impact if you don’t have many and you score low in one of them. But there’s no point overly worrying because there really is not much you can do to sway or predict the outcome.
- The bad reviews you get will rarely be for what you expect. We had five stars across the board except for two guests. One was because there were a few spider webs due to the weather bringing spiders indoors and the other was retaliatory because we had made a claim against them due to damage being made to the property.
- That brings me to my next point, AirBnB support for hosts is abysmal. They refused to remove this 2 star review despite the guests specifically saying that everything about the house and their stay was perfect but they gave us two stars for the claim.
- Little touches are appreciated. We provided little LEGO mini figures or small sets for longer stays. The kids loved them.
- It’s more stressful than anticipated. We were always wondering if we’d left the house clean enough or with enough amenities. We did all the cleaning ourselves as we need the income to help pay our mortgage.
- The things that go wrong aren’t what you expect. Our main issue with guests is that they couldn’t figure out the door lock. It was so natural for us, we didn’t realise other people wouldn’t be familiar with it. Lesson learned.
- Guest interactions can be positive. We’re both A social and wanted to limit contact with guests as much as possible but we did run into them once or twice or have to go to the property to help with something and almost every time the guests were so lovely and friendly. We really enjoyed the small interactions we’d had.
- No matter what information you provide some guests will either not read it or totally ignore it. So prepare yourself to repeat a few instructions.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot I meant to add here but if you made it this far, thanks for reading and feel free to share what you’ve learned through hosting.