Airbnb: Its Not a Dating App!

Of course, it isn’t. You know it isn’t. So why do so many hosts complain and/or comment on their guests’ personalities and little foibles?

One of the most frequent is that ‘guests are so entitled these days’. Er, well, for me the fact that so many hosts require guests who fit in perfectly to the host’s idea of the exemplary guest are themselves being entitled.

But it’s not one-sided. You’ll sometimes see reviews from guests that criticise the host and remember, that’s not the way things are supposed to work. Guests are meant to write about their stay not “the host was not very friendly” or “the host had poor personal hygiene” and so on. Guests must review their stay, not the host’s personality or little eccentricities.

Likewise, the host must review what her guests were like as guests and not criticise the guests in other ways. 

This is a business transaction. Neither host nor guest needs to ‘like’ each other. 

Don’t be misled by those images from early Airbnb adverts that show the guests and the hosts together gleefully enjoying croissants and coffee with the view of the Eifel Tower seen through the window. There are no rules that say that hosts and guests need to hang out together – in fact, in the days of Covid, it’s undesirable. So personalities don’t matter.

If I stay in a hotel, then I don’t have to like the manager. If I eat in a restaurant, the same applies. I don’t even see the pilot who flies the plane I’m travelling on so I definitely don’t need to like him and my life, sort of, is in his hands. Same with the surgeon removing my appendix.

I’ve known hosts say that if they are hosting guests in their home it’s important for them to be a good fit. Why? I’ve hosted in separate apartments and in my own home. The longest guest I had in my own home stayed for six weeks. Of course, we were civil to each other but we didn’t have to make pancakes together either. Business is business.