AirBnB has become increasingly popular during the last few years. After using the service as a traveler a few times, I started to do AirBnB-hosting myself as well. Here are some of my experiences after hosting several dozens of travelers during a 4-month time period. Most of the time the guests had the apartment for themselves as I was away from home, but especially in the beginning I stayed with the guests at home personally.
Positives:
* Many people are really kind and respectful towards your apartment.
I was pleasantly surprised by this actually. I had read all those horror stories of guests who've left the apartment in total disarray, but in my case with the exception of people from two (2) reservations who left the apartment more or less messy, the rest were very clean and treated the house with care.
* You make new friends (provided that you meet the guests and hang out together).
This was an another thing that surprised me as I didn't really know what to expect when I started hosting. The origins of my guests ranged from one continent to another all over the world, but one couple, a guy from Panama and a girl from Cuba were people with whom I clicked with the most. They stayed for two nights only but during the first evening we already hit it off and went downtown to have a drink and hang out, and we had a blast. When it came time for them to leave I genuinely felt sad that they had to go. Sure, all people are different and in my case I was blessed to meet really kind personalities, but this particular couple was the best 'reward', if you will, of the whole AirBnB-hosting experience. We still stay in touch and will meet again in the future.
* You make a financial profit and get a feeling of accomplishment.
The financial side is the obvious reason for doing hosting in the first place, but it still felt really good to be able to manage the reservations by yourself and seeing the profits of your hard work. When the reservations piled up I felt like an accomplished businessman. And in case you wonder, yeah, I did pay all my taxes. :p
Observations:
* People snoop through your personal belongings (when you're not home) and they are CURIOUS.
From books on the shelf to games and dvd's on display, all the way to furnishing and decorations. You could easily think of this as a negative and I don't disagree, yet I decided to mention this as an observation instead. Upon returning home you very often saw items clearly moved and browsed, and in a rare unfortunate occurrence, something small even broken. This is something that left me annoyed every time I saw it but I learned to expect snooping when you rent your home to guests, especially when you're not there in person. Only a minority of the guests were openly curious about belongings when I was present.
* Some people expect you to be their sightseeing guide.
Information- or otherwise, some guests ask you for advice and help related to sightseeing spots etc., with some of them even relying on you to provide them with bus/train schedules. I don't mind sharing sightseeing tips but it made me annoyed when people didn't seem to be able to take care of their trip schedules by themselves.
* There will likely be a language barrier with some of your guests.
You could list this as a negative as well, but in my case the guests with a language barrier turned out to be very kind, thankfully. These guests relied on google-translate when making a reservation and communicating with you, and it was very puzzling and difficult to understand each other at times. Some guests even messaged me in the beginning with their native language instead of google-translated English, which puzzled me even more since I couldn't speak say, Italian or Russian.
Negatives:
* Many people don't read your house rules/regulations when making a reservation.
This was one the most baffling things to me, especially since when making a reservation on AirBnB the guests are shown the house rules-section (provided that you've written some to your listing) before they can actually reserve. The sad fact of the guests not having read the house rules became evident when they were surprised i.e. that I was going to sleep in the same house with them. You would think that at least the guests with the ability to understand English would pay enough attention to get to know their place of stay, but for whatever reason some guests did not.
* Some guests seem to think of your house as a hotel.
They will use extra towels, items and basically anything available to them when you're not present. They do not care about limitations and this was yet an another proof of the guests not reading your house rules.
* The first reservations can make you feel uncomfortable or uneasy.
The sensation was this: There is someone who I don't even know staying here with me, in my home. *Yikes!* At first it felt weird and a bit uncomfortable, but I became used it rather quickly and it wasn't an issue afterwards.
* When the calendar fills up with reservations, it can become overwhelming.
Having the whole summer filled with reservations did earn me a good profit, but it came with a cost of some fatigue and stress. I constantly had to be aware of the dates when the guests would arrive and when they'd check-out, and somewhere in between you'd have to do the cleaning and prepare the room itself. And then there was the task of sending all the necessary information on how to find the apartment with directions, etc. All of it started to become exhausting eventually as I didn't limit the amount of reservations.
* You have to do lots of laundry. LOTS OF IT.
Unless you make the guests sleep in used bedsheets, you will have to do lots of laundry, and that means lots of WORK. This was definitely one of most annoying things about the whole experience.
-- All in all, I'm happy to have experienced AirBnB-hosting but I found it wasn't for me. There is so much work and effort that goes into providing a smooth experience for guests and running the hosting 'business' started to demand more from me than it actually gave back. I don't regret it, but I likely won't do it again.
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