Lay My Hat

We have a heavily demanding guest in one of our non-managed rentals. We have a feeling the owner wants to evict them 2 days into a 15 day stay due to excessive demands and calls.

Has anyone ever had to do this before (first time for us in 10 years).

evict because of excessive demands and calls?
How would the justification for an eviction be covered by TCs??? (I always thought any sort of unreasonable behaviour clauses were to protect the neighbours and public.
Gosh you learn something new every day)

We have 9 cottages on one site and we live on site - in 15 years, we have only had to evict one group - they had a problem with the water (that's another story!) so we had to go in to sort it out - while we were in there, the 2 children were swinging on one of the kitchen cabinet doors which had come off its hinges, and they had opened up the recliner sofa, they were running along the top of the sofa, jumping down onto the seat, then jumping onto the recliner part and onto the floor. The whole recliner seat had been bent and twisted by the time we saw them - Long story - asked them to stop,they refused, called us racists, eventually Cottages4you told them to leave after we sent photos of the damage - so they left - but on their way out, they threw the contents of a bottle of dark soy sauce over everything in the cottage - all the sofas, every stair of the first staircase, in and out of 3 bedrooms, on the carpets, walls, headboards, beds, up the next staircase, and in and out of the next 3 bedrooms, carpets, walls, headboards, beds... of course they refused to pay for the damage so we took them to Small Claims Court - we won but they wouldn't pay so now we have bailiffs going in...such a saga and still not a penny paid after 18 months...

I don't think you can evict somebody simply because they are, in somebody's subjective view, too demanding. If the guest is contravening the T&Cs, then that's a totally different matter.

We have had "pain in the butt" demanding guests - but by the time they were half way through their 2 week stay, they'd relaxed into holiday mode and were fine for the remainder of their stay.

If your particular guests are just being overly demanding (and not breaking any T&Cs), control and contain them with extra attention. Hopefully, they'll respond favourably, calm down and relax.

I've never done it but have come close to it recently with some complete diva guests with appallingly behaved children who were causing damage. Living on site I do have it covered in my T&Cs:

"Any excessive noise, nuisance to the proprietor or neighbours, or illegal activity before or during the Licence to Occupy will cause the proprietor to terminate the agreement without compensation or refund".

apexblue, it is very difficult to judge your situation because 'demanding' is quite a loose and objective term. Are you able to expand on their demands? If the demands are outrageous and being aggressively pursued then perhaps they have a case. Maybe in members area?

Could the demands be managed? As bunny says it is difficult to advise without the facts but could the owners say they're only open for 'business' at certain hours? Could they explain that is is self catered and therefore unless there is an emergency they don't expect to have to deal with continuous support? Do they have a fact file they can keep pointing them to? Can they revert to only dealing with texts if a non emergency etc etc.

Mouse
x

I'd agree we can't really comment unless we know what the "excessive demands and calls" are.

Many years ago we had guests in the gite attached to our house. We mentioned, as a courtesy, we would be away overnight during their stay and they were horrified. They said they had only booked to come to us because we would be here as they'd never been abroad before. We spent ages reassuring them (the locals are not cannibals!) and reminding them that the gite is 'self catering' and although we are here to help if required we are not part of the 'package' or holiday reps.

They did calm down and relax but it was an eye opener as to what some guests expect and how they perceive our role as 'hosts'.

Haha, indeed.

I had some negative feedback on AirBNB recently because I "On arrival however, Joe explained the operation of the apartment, but left very quickly stating that we could call him on his cell phone at any time. The meeting was very brief"

... what more did they want, a strip tease?!

Judging by some of the activities AirBnB guests seem to have been up to lately, ( according to recent posts here ) maybe that's exactly what they were after, Edinburgh. They obviously thought you were going to join in their orgy!

Better to put up the damage deposit then.....

The numerous phone calls have stopped and the owner has calmed down.

The requests ranged from supplying bottled water and a change of linen and towels daily. Plus being rude to one of our staff. Think he is used to staying in a hotel.

Thanks for the support if it was needed.

Hmmmm...to put yourself in breech of contract over these issues by evicting the guests would not have been worth the extraordinary trouble the eviction would have provoked in my view.

alcooper wrote:..... asked them to stop,they refused, called us racists, eventually Cottages4you told them to leave after we sent photos of the damage - so they left - but on their way out, they threw the contents of a bottle of dark soy sauce over everything in the cottage - all the sofas, every stair of the first staircase, in and out of 3 bedrooms, on the carpets, walls, headboards, beds, up the next staircase, and in and out of the next 3 bedrooms, carpets, walls, headboards, beds... of course they refused to pay for the damage so we took them to Small Claims Court - we won but they wouldn't pay so now we have bailiffs going in...such a saga and still not a penny paid after 18 months...

Absolutely shocking, alcooper that guests would do that just because you ask them to control their children and point out that furniture is being damaged. When we think of what we have been through in our 11 years running a holiday home, we should consider ourselves lucky that we didn't have a group like this. Some of our guests have been pigs but nothing like this has fortunately occurred, except for a group of students who decided to have a party that got out of hand (they paid for the damage in the end without any fuss). I have looked at some of the pretty cottages on your site and couldn't imagine the scenes after one of those was trashed in this way, with the light-coloured walls and wall-to-wall carpeting in many of the rooms...it must have taken ages to get everything back the way it was.

At what point could you call the police over damage to property .I know its a nightmare over AST tenants,and quite frankly the courts seem to have little power to make costs awarded that have to be paid.But if you have a court order made for payment ,I have applied for attachment of earnings .All cost I am afraid .

Thank you for your nice comments AngloDutch - it was the worst experience we've had in 16 years - the only good thing is that we didn't have any bookings for a few weeks afterwards so we didn't have to cancel any bookings! Bessie, we did involve the police as it was criminal damage, but although they interviewed each of the group involved, none of them would own up to being the one who sprayed the sauce, so the police couldn't do anything. We're just hoping the bailiffs can do something!