The strange things that guests do

Yesterday a friend with a rental was shaking her head.  “You won’t believe it. They’ve put my stovetop coffee maker into the dishwasher and it’s ruined, it’s black!”

We have all had guests do strange things. Like:

• putting an electric kettle on the stovetop, melting the base
• standing on the toilet seat, and finding it broken
• trying to light the small candle, using three matches, till they discovered it was battery operated and plastic
• putting ten logs in the wood fire to get it red hot, then opening all the doors and windows
• improvising a firelighter by saturating a full roll of kitchen paper with mineral turpentine and putting it in the wood fire – luckily it didn’t explode
• running warm water into the spa for 4 hours, using half the water tank supply
• using the bed linen to dry off the dog on a rainy day
• putting large amounts of sink detergent in the dishwasher, and surprised when it overflows with bubbles
• confusing the bidet with  the toilet ( a colleague removed his bidets after multiple problems)
• and so many more

So what to do?  In some cases, the guest will be mortified and offer to pay for the damage.  In some cases, they will try and hide the evidence and hope you don’t find it, or even deny it ever happened.

For those who come clean and offer to pay, you are on the road to having a good repeat guest.  You can be generous and grateful, or even refuse the payment, giving a feeling of obligation by the guest.  They are likely to come back.

In some cases, you can put up a discreet label explaining how it works.  Like a label on the handle of the coffee maker saying ‘Not for dishwasher.’

The rest are problematic.

You probably have some conditions of booking that allow you to charge the guest.  I’ve learned from long experience that for small things, it isn’t worth the angst, even for some larger things.  In the battle of conflict, you might get some money, but one thing is guaranteed, the emotional turmoil will distract you from your main game for hours and even days.  Time you should be concentrating on better marketing and delighting those guests who will come back.  You might get some money on insurance, but policies are full of slippery exceptions and mind numbing form filling, also taking you from your main game.

I do two things.  If it isn’t too big and doesn’t happen often, I just write it off as a cost of doing business, balanced out by the majority of good guests who love the stay and look after everything beautifully.  I don’t lose any sleep over it.

I also have a blacklist.  These are for the few guests who I won’t have back, and who are excluded from my monthly newsletter.  It gives a great deal of satisfaction to put an errant guest on my blacklist without any conflict.  If the cleaner has been involved, as usually they will, it also gives them a sense of satisfaction knowing that the guest has unknowingly suffered a penalty of sorts for disrespecting the cleaner’s good work.

What kind of strange things have guests done in your rental?

Please mail me your examples to [email protected], and let me know if you’d prefer me to use just your initials when I publish the examples.