Olivia is a great host! He was kind and very friendly during our stay. He happened to be outside when we arrived and he greeted us and took us to the unit and showed us how to gain entry with the lock pad. It’s obvious he cares a lot about the suite. It seems like this is something new for him, and he is really interested in growing this into a successful business so we hope this review will assist with that.
There were, however, some issues we had with the unit and we feel it’s important to be open and transparent in our review. We feel it’s important for future guests to know some of these details. We want to be clear that we are not sharing these things to simply leave a bad review. Our hope in writing this review is to hopefully provide Olivia with some constructive feedback on our stay, so that he can continue to improve the overall property and continue to do well as he grows his Airbnb business.
Unfortunately, there were several very basic amenities and features that were not quite up to par compared to our other experiences with previous Airbnb’s:
- the lock to enter the suite does not always latch properly as it was not installed properly. Olivia showed my husband how to unlock/lock the door when we arrived but it still often took us several attempts before we could get the door open or closed. My husband needed to basically lift the entire door within the frame to ensure the deadbolt went in the correct location and actually locked the door. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I (a short female) could have lifted the door and gotten the door open/shut if I was staying here on my own.
- It was clear as soon as we entered the unit that there has been an animal in it previously. The entire unit smelled like cat pee. One of the stairs had been re-carpeted recently (we could tell because it was a different colour carpet and there were 2 air fresheners on the stairs to mask the smell). There were several very strong air fresheners in the unit to try and mask the smell, which only seemed to make the smell worse. The air fresheners gave me a bad headache, so I eventually needed to put them away into cupboards. We did, however, appreciate that Olivia seemed to be aware of this and is doing what he can to remedy the problem. At one point in our stay, he requested if it would be ok with us if his carpenter entered the suite to look at the stairs. We had no problem with this (we were there). We know cat pee can be really difficult to remove, and I’m sure this issue will be fully resolved soon and it is clear that Olivia is taking many steps to fix it.
- There was only one very small garbage can located in the kitchen, with no additional bags to refill. We were there for almost a week, and obviously needed to replace the garbage after about 4 days. We looked for additional bags, but couldn’t find any. When I messaged Olivia to ask about them, he laughed and told us not to worry and he would deal with the garbage when we left. But our issue was that we still had time remaining on our stay and nowhere to put our garbage. There was also no garbage can in the bathroom, which I feel is really important, especially for female guests.
- There was virtually no cutlery for us. There were 2 forks, a couple of spoons but absolutely no knives. We needed to go to the store and purchase some disposable knives ourselves. There were also some, what I assumed, were used and re-washed plastic cutlery in the drawer, but we weren’t really comfortable using them. In addition, the cupboard had old used and re-washed slurpee cups for drinking glasses.
- The walls are covered with old patched holes. They had either not been painted over at all (bedroom), or have been badly painted over and are very visible (above the tv, at the top of the stairs).
- The towels were very old and had obviously been well used for many years. They were of varying dark colours and sizes. They were also very small (not proper bath towels). So we did not really use them. Luckily, I had brought my own beach towels from home so we used those.
- The WiFi was very inconsistent and cut out multiple times a day. I think maybe we were sharing the wifi with the one he and his family use or we were very far away from the router. Perhaps he should consider having a separate wifi for the unit? We also needed to request the wifi password, as we did not receive any welcome information in the unit upon arrival, like many other airbnbs we have previously stayed where we gave been provided a booklet of important information and cleanup guidelines.
- The listing doesn’t advertise these things, but there are a couple of amenities not included that may be missed when booking if you don’t look closely. For example, there is no coffee maker. We needed to get our own coffee every day. Perhaps Olivia could consider getting a Keurig or something? And there is also no dishwasher.
- There are some aspects of the listing that don’t appear to be accurate. For example, there is no fireplace in the unit even though it’s a listed amenity. The listing also does not have ski lift access. The listing also says that it has lake access, and there is a lake close by, but I’m not sure if we had access to it or not? We wish Olivia would have shared some details with us on how to get there or if we needed any documentation in order to access