Dear Hosts,

In 2022, we stayed in 25 different Airbnb’s for over 110 days and have learned a lot about what we are looking for in a stay, and how to find it by searching the listings. But it shouldn’t be so hard! It is usually a real challenge to identify if a place meets our requirements by looking at the photos, descriptions, and reviews on the listing. Our experiences have refined our requirements but we hope that hosts can also refine their portrayal on the listings. In this post, I will attempt to describe how a listing can show what guests are looking for when trying to choose a property.

So…. Dear Airbnb hosts,

Please tell us exactly where it is and how we can get around. The primary question we have for every town is location. I usually don’t have a car so I want to know how far a place is from the bus station, train station, ferry dock, or airport. Is there a subway station or tram nearby? What metro station do we use? Can I easily walk to restaurants, grocery stores, attractions or the beach? What is the neighborhood like around the airbnb? Is it better to use Uber, Grab, taxis or public transportation? Are there a lot of stairs in the building or to get up the hill from the train station. I find that sometimes I have to read all the reviews to find out if this a good location when it should really be in the first paragraph of the Airbnb description.

Please choose pictures that are helpful to potential guests. I don’t care about your artwork or flowers in the gardens.

What we really want is to know what the space actually looks like. Floor maps are the best and should be a requirement for every listing. I want to know how big the kitchen and bathroom is… and if the bed is actually in the living room. Some sort of drawing is the best way to show that.

You must include enough pictures of every room because everyone has different things they are looking for. We have things that are important to us. We want somewhere to sit besides the bed. We want a way to make coffee. A microwave and a couple of burners are helpful if we are there for more than a couple of days. Ovens and clothes washers are a big plus. If it has a TV, is it a smart TV so I can watch Youtube or Netflix, or do I just get to watch the local channels in a different language? The bed has to show both sides of the bed (I hate beds pushed up against walls that force one person to crawl over the other in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom). The pics must show all these things clearly.

Outside space to drink a cup of coffee or a glass of wine is big for us. We have been fooled a couple times because the patio shown is a shared patio 4 floors up on the rooftop. The photo should be captioned if the balcony isn’t directly attached to the Airbnb.

Small bathrooms are acceptable to us but what is really annoying is the lack of shelves in the shower. We had a streak in Italy where none of the units provided anywhere to set your soap or shampoo except the floor. Maybe it is a cultural thing but I think most travelers want some sort of shower caddy or shelf. I’m OK with not providing soap or shampoo but enough toilet paper should be provided for entire stay. One roll for a week isn’t enough. We also want some shelves for our bathroom stuff next to the sink. We both have small toiletry kits that need somewhere to go.

One of the biggest downsides, that we have dealt with for years, is the struggle to meet the hosts to get the key. This is not as big of a problem anymore because many places are going to lockboxes, or keypad locks. But many hosts really want to meet their guests which I can understand because they want to see the people staying in their home with their furniture and their things. But, we often don’t know exactly when we are getting into a town. Transportation is often late and we have a hard time of guessing when we would actually get there. I feel bad for hosts waiting for us so they can try to show us the Airbnb by using google translate on their phones. It is all a bit awkward and I appreciate places that have gone to the lockboxes or keypads.

That being said, we love to have real people as hosts. I don’t want to stay in a place that is run by a corporation that have tons of units. I like being in a place where someone used to live and they just decided to make some extra money by renting out a floor or extra mother-in-law apartment. Generic IKEA places that were just bought and renovated, aren’t as cool as places where people obviously decorated to their tastes because they used to live there.

Some countries have requirements for hosts to record passport numbers, but that can easily be done by texting a pic of the passports.

There are also some bonus things that hosts can do to make a stay much more agreeable. Many places are providing a notebook filled with instructions on the Airbnb as well as info about the neighborhood or the attractions. If an appliance is tricky, provide instructions in English and other languages. We’ve had some hosts that make short videos showing how to get in and how to use appliances and it is super helpful. I like to have recommendations to a good bar, restaurant or grocery store. Bus and metro maps are helpful as well as maps to the museums or attractions. Instructions on where to flip a tripped breaker is important. Instructions for power outages (this has happened multiple times to us). Garbage and recycling instructions are necessary for longer stays.

Wifi passwords should be in the instructions. By the way, please change your wifi passwords to be easier to type in on a phone. 78FggU34mVx&$76bB is not an easy password to type in on a smart phone.

Things that are often not in a Airbnb that can easily be added. Ice cube trays – Americans love our ice and are always shocked when other countries don’t care about it. One sharp knife. Not sure if these get stolen but it is rare to find a knife that can easily cut a slice of bread or cheese. Coffee pods or enough coffee for at least the first morning. If we are staying for 2 weeks, I don’t expect 2 weeks of coffee but the first day would be great. Wine openers are also useful. Sometimes it is hard to find screw top wine bottles. Kitchen towels or paper towels are often missing. Outlet adapters are great to have. We carry our own but it is nice to have more than a couple. Cutting boards are necessary if you don’t want guests cutting directly on your counters. Extra pillows can make up a bit for beds that are too hard or soft. Beach chairs, beach towels, umbrellas and snorkel gear are appreciated for beach locations. USB outlets or charging stations are amazing to see.

All Airbnb hosts should live in their units for a few days. That would resolve a lot of the problems associated with missing necessities.

Someday, we may set up our own airbnb in Seattle and it would be interesting to see the other side of this equation. I know our experience as being a guest would make us better hosts. Maybe being a host would make us better guests as well.