10 Ways To Be A Terrible Airbnb Guest

by Elizabeth Seward on

Most people by now have heard of Airbnb and as the awareness of the site spreads, so does the use of it. Airbnb provides affordable and interesting accommodations that are a nice alternative to hotels when traveling, especially if you like to meet locals when you’re in a new city. But Airbnb guests are sometimes a nightmare for Airbnb hosts, as is documented on AirbnbHell.

Here are 10 ways you can be a terrible Airbnb guest (Of course, avoid doing these things to be a good guest).

1. Use the site to commit a crime
This might seem like it goes without saying, but it doesn’t. When a host opens up their home to a complete stranger, no amount of verifications Airbnb gives a host to make them feel safe changes the fact that the host is putting him or herself, family and personal possessions in a vulnerable position. Airbnb had to change their entire approach to host safety after a woman had her apartment ransacked in San Francisco when she rented it out via the site. Other hosts have had to deal with identity theft, drug addicts, prostitution and ruined personal possessions, among other things. Dear criminals, Airbnb is not the best outlet for your intended crime. You will be tracked, you will be caught and you will receive the most terrible karma ever for taking advantage of someone who gave you the benefit of the doubt. 2. Cross personal boundaries
You have to have decent discernment and social skills to be a good Airbnb guest or host. One Airbnb host wrote about her bad experiences with guests for CNN and detailed a guest showing her porn he had made with his girlfriend. Know what might be considered offensive to a host and don’t cross personal boundaries without clear and enthusiastic consent.

3. Ask for a discount
Airbnb hosts have already thought through their pricing carefully and are charging you, in most cases, far less than a hotel would. Don’t push your hosts to give you an even better deal than they’re offering. If you want to pay less, find a listing that charges less.

4. Try to get your “money’s worth”
You’re already getting your money’s worth when you use Airbnb. You’re getting affordable accommodations, local insight and breakfast. Don’t push your hosts for additional food, drinks, rides or anything else unless offered. And remember, even when extras are offered to you, you don’t have to say yes to everything offered. Understand that hosts are doing all that they can to be kind to you and make you feel comfortable, but that they also have lives and jobs to balance while hosting you.

5. Leave a mess
Some Airbnb listings include cleaning fees and some don’t. Either way, don’t be a slob. You’re in another person’s home and you should treat it as such. The best guests wash their dishes, keep their things contained to the room they’re renting, clean up messes they happen to make and put the towels and sheets they used in a pile before leaving.

6. Argue about politics/religion/etc.
I believe it’s polite to not talk about potentially controversial issues in any sort of loaded way before making sure you’re in agreement with the other person. Some Airbnb hosts make their political and religious views clear on their profiles or in their homes. If you are staying with someone who has different beliefs than you do, respect that you are in their home. Avoid conversation on those topics if conversation is going to mean an argument.

7. Use things that aren’t yours to use
Most Airbnb hosts make it clear in the rules section of their listing what you can use and what you can’t. For the things that aren’t so clear, common courtesy should tell you when you need to ask permission before using something in another person’s home. You don’t need to ask permission to get a glass of water. You should ask permission before opening a bottle of wine. You don’t need to ask permission to take a shower. You should ask permission before playing one of the host’s instruments. It should be obvious.

8. Make yourself too at home
Airbnb hosts want you to feel comfortable, not take over their home. The rules regarding this tip are a bit different depending on whether you’re renting an entire place or just a room. But if you’re renting just a room, don’t monopolize the rest of the home. Don’t take naps on the couch, invite your friends over, turn the kitchen table into your personal office, perform a seance or redecorate the place. The home is not yours, you’re just staying in it.

9. Complain unjustly
If you have a serious problem with the space you’re renting through Airbnb, you should talk to the host about it. You deserve to have clean sheets and towels, for instance, and you should address this with your host if you don’t. But don’t complain to your hosts (or in your review) if the neighbors are throwing a party, if you rented a room with a loft bed but are suddenly afraid of heights or if you don’t like cooking with the appliances and other kitchen equipment in the house. Know the difference between a warranted complaint and a petty complaint.

10. Expect hosts to change their lives for you
In case this isn’t clear to you already, it’s not appropriate to expect your Airbnb host to wake up at 5 a.m. to let you in, take you around town, wake up before you in the mornings, be available all day long for conversation, watch your pet while you’re out all day every day (unless a rate for dog-sitting is agreed upon beforehand), do your laundry for you (although if you ask nicely when they are already doing laundry, they might say yes) or drive you to the airport upon departure. Have some manners and understand that you should be grateful for any extraordinary efforts a host makes to accommodate you and reciprocal in generosity when possible.

Gummy Bear Art Car Takes Grand Tour

by Meg Nesterov on

Sometimes an “only in New York” moment has a more global story. On a rainy afternoon this week in Manhattan, my friend visiting from Germany was excited to spot a Mercedes with Munich plates. The car had a distinctive pattern covering its exterior, we debated whether it was metal, fabric or beads, but the actual decoration is much sweeter: gummy bears.

The back window detailed the “grand tour” of this visionary art, starting in Munich, traveling to Paris and London, and finally New York. The project is the third installment of artist Guenther Siraky‘s Mercedes Trilogy, which also took him and the car through Europe in 2007. The plan was to take the gummy bear car to each of the city’s major art museums, including the Louvre, Tate and Guggenheim, exhibiting the work of art in front of each museum. Over a million people have seen the car, and reactions range from disbelief and amazement to tears of joy. NYPD officers have even allowed him to park in forbidden places to display his work. While the car should be covered in rain and extreme heat, the slightly melted gummy bears just add to the vehicle’s charm. Siraky intended to sell the vehicle once he completed his tour last month, but he has extended his time in New York, and can be found driving it all over the five boroughs through the end of September.

See a slideshow of the gummy bear car in NYC below, and check in with the art car’s adventures through the artist’s Facebook page.

%Slideshow-76574%

#BPTravel 2013: Thoughts On Travel Writing And The Journey Of Life

by Don George on

Two weeks ago, one of the most intense and invigorating periods of my year occurred: the annual Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference. For four days, some 90 students and 25 faculty members met in an intimate bookstore in Northern California for workshops, panels, and evening events that celebrated travel writing, travel photography, and much more.

Over the four days of the conference, as every year, unanticipated insights took seed and risks took flight, and some profoundly important lessons and dreams were conceived. Usually I write a piece summarizing the conference for Gadling, but this year an excellent summary has already been posted. And somehow, what I want to say about the conference, or about the thoughts that emerged from the conference, all seemed to come together in my concluding speech.

In those final remarks I said some things I’d planned to say and some things I absolutely hadn’t planned to say, things that just spontaneously erupted in me as I talked. That eruption, I think, is part of the magic of an event like this, where unexpected connections and mysterious interweavings occur, where you learn things you didn’t even know you were learning and grow in ways you didn’t even know you’d grown.

Here are some excerpts from my remarks. I hope they touch you with something of the spirit those four days cultivated in me, and I hope they enrich your journey, in the outer world and the inner world, too.

*****

One of the things I like to preach when I’m in my preacher mode is that whatever you put out into the world comes back to you a hundredfold, and I feel like this conference embodies that. The generosity that the faculty put out comes back to them. The risk-taking that you put out comes back to you in the best possible way. So much of it is about you going out into the world with the right spirit. The world rewards you when you do that, and I hope that’s one of the takeaways you’ll bring back into the larger world from this conference: What you put out into the world comes back to you….

For me this year is especially important. A month ago, a great party was held in this very room. The occasion was the fact that I had one of those unfortunate birthdays where you age by 10 years overnight. I went to bed in one decade of my life and woke up in another. That birthday was my 60th birthday. For about two years prior to this, 60 was the Voldemort of birthdays for me. I could not pronounce its name out loud. I was so absorbed in the idea that turning 60 meant that I was really, really, really old. And I didn’t want to deal with that. I just wanted to ignore it, or deny it.

And then I had an epiphany, that this is what happens in life: You have a fear and the more you deny it, the more you empower that fear. And then the more you decide to embrace that fear, you immediately empower yourself. I realize that turning 60, or saying that I’m turning 60, is not a death-defying act. But for me it was a very big leap of something. I decided to just say, “OK, world, I’m turning 60.” And it felt great.

What this taught me about fear was that we have the ability to either create a fear and let it grow and prosper, or deflate a fear and take it away. And on the road, as in life right here at home – I believe that we’re always on the road, wherever we are – the way you get rid of a fear is you embrace it. So I embraced that. And I hope that’s a takeaway for you from this conference: that whatever your fear is, embrace it. Embrace it.

It’s about risk-taking. It’s about journeying into your discomfort zone and how that can magically open things up for you. I think that’s an important lesson….

What it comes down to for me is that while I believe that our souls go through various mutations and continue when our physical bodies don’t, I also believe that our souls inhabit our physical bodies one at a time, and we’re here right now, each of us in our physical presence and with our souls, and for all practical purposes, this is it: This is our one chance to live life as fully and gracefully and graciously and lovingly as possible. This is it.

Every single moment, this is it. This is your moment. This is your moment. This is your moment.

The more you infuse those moments with integrity and honesty and passion and attentiveness and the desire for quality and the desire for connection – and to me, the word that really summarizes all of these is love – the more that you infuse every single moment of your path, of your journey, of your life, with love, the bigger and better and richer you become. And everybody around you becomes bigger and better and richer by that too.

And that’s travel, that’s travel writing, that’s travel photography, that’s dish-washing, that’s laundry – it’s really everything, it’s a part of every single thing that you do.

What I hope you’ll take away from this on your journey is that it’s your responsibility to be a steward of the planet, to be a steward of your own stories, to give them the care and the nurturing that they need and to let them out into the world when they’re ready to be let out into the world, and to be a steward of your relationships and connections with other people.

I hope that you will spread the love that you felt here. If you take the seeds of love away with you and scatter them around the planet, we’ll all be so much the richer for that, and this world will be such a better place for that. That’s your sacred responsibility now, your sacred trust.

Travel Back Thursday: Broadway, From Broome Street

by Jake Thiewes on

Thursdays mark a new rendition of our Photo of the Day on Gadling. We’ll be traveling back in time to feature interesting memories of years past. We’re reaching far back in the archives this week. Countless people have walked down, driven on, or worked near Broadway in New York City. Ever stop to think what Broadway looked like, over 150 years ago? Now you don’t have to. Enjoy this photograph from (roughly) 1855.

We’d love to feature your photos and videos on Gadling, so please add them to our Flickr Pool (with Creative Commons licensing!), tag @GadlingTravel on Instagram or email us at OfTheDay@gadling.go-vip.net.

Go Outside: Here’s Why You Need To Leave The House

by Elizabeth Seward on

Travel is all about leaving your comfort zone. Even to travel locally, you need to go outside.

But with the masses becoming exponentially more sedentary and with staycations on the rise, we’re collectively becoming a culture of people who just don’t get out enough. This isn’t good for our minds –- seeing new places and people and trying new things is integral to a developing mind. But this isn’t good for our physical health, either. AsapScience put this video together in an effort to explain what would happen to you if you stopped going outside entirely.

Spoiler alert: you’re going to want to go outside after watching this video.