Lay My Hat

Mouse wrote:Gosh Anglo....what a pain they sounded!

It does make you, as an owner on site, feel uneasy when the only contact you have with your guests is when they have a complaint, or come to you irritated with a question about something, as though you have failed to clearly explain it to them. It gives you the idea that they are not enjoying themselves

You're spot on. It has happened a few times over the years with us....and once when I had to intervene over too loud music and the group took a real dislike to me after that.
For me politeness costs nothing.
It's quite amazing though how miserable some people can be on holiday.

Best of luck for the rest of 2016

Mousie
x

Thanks, Mousie. Yes, when we notice that guests are not enjoying themselves, we always think it's something to do with the accommodation, etc. - but it's often to do with the weather or when there's a large group that are getting on each other's nerves, isn't it?

We currently have 10 adults, 1 child , 2 babies and a dog that have crossed over from Germany, staying until Sunday and even though a very large group for us, all happily enjoying theselves! They are really nice people who can't stop throwing compliments our way. It's groups like this that really make it all worthwhile! We too hope for an uneventful summer

oh, god, we came to dread Canadians booking!

Not ALL were terrible but about 3/4 of our Canadians were a problem.

Of the problem ones, it was the same type of behaviour. Things always seem to get broken; the house was really grubby on departure - sticky worktops, food crumbs all over floors and in all rooms, dirty footprints on carpets where they hadn't bothered to wipe feet on the huge doormats we had; one lot broke the washing machine with the clothes stuck inside, when I attended with the engineer it had about 3 times the maximum load in it, which I had to take away, get laundered and dried. I think they broke the machine by not waiting til the cycle had finished (it was a washer dryer and that amount of clothes stuffed in was NEVER going to dry on a cycle that monitored dryness) so I think they tried to open the door anyway and broke the handle off, trapping their clothes.

Also bins overflowing and not emptied...

Hate to say it but we weren't keen on Chinese bookings either for the same reason - they just didn't seem to be able to think things through...

.... some of the problem guests and the big boy listing sites made life so painful that we were really glad to be able to stop HLets and go back to long term tenancy lets.

Is there any way that such guests can be named if not shamed? At least with Air B&B the guests are rated as well as the host.

I've just had problems, not with my own guests, but those of the people next door. Two teenage boys constantly played football in the corridor outside the flats, and an elderly man continually peered through my kitchen window, darting away if he saw that I'd seen him.

I didn't know what nationality they were so it was difficult to know what to say to them, but I was very glad when they left.

I've just had problems, not with my own guests, but those of the people next door

We have had similar problems twice in recent weeks. One lot in the downstairs flat were very rowdy, the son had some kind of mental issue and would get drunk and start shouting and swearing in the garden. Luckily our guests were very understanding and just called it 'the added entertainment'!

The second time the downstairs guests banged on the ceiling as the guests in my flat had a very active, heavy footed toddler apparently. Although she was very nice and tried her best to keep the toddler quiet, the mum got in a panic about it and cancelled the next holiday she had booked for Feb.

Very difficult when it's not even your own guests causing the problems.

Oh dear; I have Canadian guests at the moment booked in for almost 3 weeks.....

pambon wrote:Oh dear; I have Canadian guests at the moment booked in for almost 3 weeks.....

Most of the Canadians who have stayed at our farmhouse have been fantastic, pambon. It has just been a very, very few who gave us bad vibes or treated us like a concierge.

My last lot of Canadians, three mature couples, were fantatic. More than made up for the ones we had before.

There's good and bad everywhere