27 Sep Airbnb Party: How to Prevent Party Crashers Killing Your Airbnb Business

Party crashers almost killed my Airbnb Business. In this post, I will show you the top 5 lessons that I’ve learned from my last guest’s undocumented Airbnb Party.

I have learned my lessons on how to more effectively screen them. In this post, I’ll share some of the precautions and screening practices that you can take to prevent it from happening to your Airbnb business.

Party crashers are a real threat to running a Passive Airbnb business. The internet is full of these horror stories.

Like that sweet Calgary couple who had $150,000 of Airbnb party damage done to their home during a drug-induced orgy celebration.

Recently, I had an incident that changed my naivety. I thought everyone was honest and nice on Airbnb. It was like that until this one guest changed it all…

Here are my lessons on how to prevent it.

Airbnb Party: Lesson #1 – House Rules

Your first defense is to create rigid house rules. Airbnb requires guests to read the house rules before booking.

But, how many times have you skimmed on agreements? Did you read your last agreement when you updated your iPhone? My guess is no. Your guests are probably doing that as well. Still, it’s very important.

Here is how you do it. Make sure to click “no” for parties and events.

Airbnb Party: Lesson #2 – Additional Rules

This is your second defense. Airbnb allows you to create additional rules. I use this space to reinforce the no parties and events policy. 

As you can see, the language I chose is very strict. This strictness can help you convey the seriousness of an offense in this violation. I do my best to warn them pre-booking and post-booking.

Airbnb Party: Lesson #3 – Listing Descriptions

I use this space to tell my potential guests the type of people I welcome to book. This gives the party crashers an idea that my unit is not for the parties.

Airbnb Party: Lesson #4 – Their Reason for Booking

I have Instant Booking turned on, so guests can instantly book my place without my approval. One of the benefits that I get to reap from Instant Book is that Airbnb ranks my listing quite high in their search. It is usually the first or second one. But, it has its drawbacks as well.

I am going to show you what this violator messaged me in their first message.

Ding, Ding, Ding! I should have seen this coming.

1. Who is Yuni? What does that have to do with her booking my reservation?
2. A group of friends- wow. How was I so naive to believe that they just wanted to see Mountain View.
3. Vague- “Looking to see.” What does that even mean? Mountain View really has nothing to see besides tech companies like Google or Apple.

All these little warning signs add up.

Airbnb Party: Lesson #5 – Reinforce House Rules

Of course, not all guests are looking for a place to party. Most of my guests are business travelers that want a home-like environment to sleep for a few nights.

I was naive and didn’t want to believe the facts that were staring me right in front of my face.

Newbie mistake.

I wrote this back to them and giving them the benefits of the doubt.

What a nice guy! I even offered to suggest a few cool places to check out… What I should have done was to press on why they decided to visit Mountain View and reinforced the idea of no parties and events like it was in my house rules.

Final Words

Learn from my mistakes! These tips will help you deter any party crashers from killing your Airbnb business or even worse, damage your property and leave you thousands of dollars in damages.

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