My wife and I (50ish) have had over 30 stays with Airbnb globally, over many years, and in EVERY case (100%), the hosts have given pretty much the same highly positive, polite, clean, respectful rating. Not one negative comment. We love Airbnb. And by the way,
For context, I am a Danish American with a wonderful wife, married dozens of years, who is least 15 shades of darker skin than I. We travel ~5 months a year, respect all cultures and we are quite humble. Cultural interests are the primary reason for our travels and we are absolutely diverse. But in this case, it’s my opinion, with 100% clarity, when you walk into this listing, it is NOT as it appears in the listing, not even close, at least not when we saw it on August 25, 2021. And it world take allot for it to match the condition posted on Airbnb. Keep in mind, this is also during the COVID reopening, when clean matters lots, right?
My wife & I have not had the opportunity to stay in a hostel or college dorm environment for decades. This apartment had zero place for any storage, except toiletries and even that was limited. The bed sheets, pillows and duvet’s, were absolutely soiled and the host did respond confirming, (via Airbnb text), that the sheets, pillow cases & duvets had not been washed.
We had arrived in the late afternoon, within minutes sharing the clearly unclean pictures with the host. The host said she would call in minutes, but immediate text us to look for clean sheets that she said were there. They were NOT there, and after finding and sorting through the ~40 pound box of miscellaneous “cloth things” that were 7 feet above the ground, on-top of a jam-packed case, 7 feet above closet crowded closet space. There were no “back-up sheets” there. At that point, It was well past dinner time, so after a quick dinner at a Danish restaurant, we went back to the apartment and started washing and drying all of the bedding. It took us until after 2AM in the morning, before they were dry. The host had ceased ALL communication hours before this.
For the record, when we initially noticed the soiled bedding, we immediately contacted the Host, who said she would call me right away. I asked several times, but she never called me. I called Airbnb and she didn’t respond to them that day either. She said her phone did not work. But when I called her, after being ignored & very frustrated for hours, her phone did in-fact work, but we were “disconnected” quickly. And she still did not call me or Airbnb that day. We had a little Airbnb text response from the host, but certainly no calls that day and Airbnb received no calls from the host that day either. I woke up, five hours after we finished washing the filthy bedding, and I immediately started looking for new places to stay. Both my wife and I were completely uncomfortable with the cleanliness situation of the hosts apartment. But, with Denmark only recently opening completely from COVID, and the university was starting its new school year that same day, so there was no close location for alternate places to stay available, under $400 a night, with the exception of hostel & college dorm-like accommodations. I looked at everything and I would’ve left if there was ANYTHING close and within a reasonable budget. Airbnb did help ( somewhat), but there were no close / appropriate options, so had to stay where we were in and hope for a good conclusion.
She was on vacation in Croatia and from her words we felt it was absolutely clear she did not want to be bothered. She had no back-up helpers, nothing. She blamed everything on her Mother. When we told her we wanted to find a new location to stay, it seemed like a jackpot to her. THEN, after we cleaned her apartment until 2AM and after she knew we spoke with Airbnb, she actually asked us to leave (INCREDIBLE), knowing we had no had no reasonable place/location to go. Her words on the phone were - wow, so rude & lacked any empathy or care for the condition & lack of cleanliness of her apartment.
She seemed to think soiled bedding was okay & us staying up until 2AM was rude. She was aware that I told her there was nowhere else for us to go, but she did not care. This is a first & it’s hard to consume. Airbnb never works this way…
To future guests: does accuracy of the posting, cleanliness & host responsiveness matter? To us it does & this is a superhost with lots of good ratings. Hmm…
Amazingly, the host seemed irritated that the soiled sheets bothered us. On the day we stayed up until 2+AM, after 10ish AM she finally reached out via Airbnb text, saying I was rude and giving the perception that the situation was no big deal, then for the remainder of the evening she stopped any communication with us. It had already been a long travel day & this scenario was simply unthinkable.
The bedding being in this condition, obviously made us concerned about the the rest of the apartment. Sadly, there were many other significant issues. The kitchen faucet was nearly falling off and had black mold all around the wood mounted sink. The stove top had months of grease on it and it looked nothing like it does in the advertisement.
While we love our very big family and many young children, but this is travel. This house is cluttered with normally wonderful toys and furniture for very young toddlers. But it’s not the kind of place I could recommend to anyone. In my opinion, the price they’re asking is more than double what anyone should pay for a place like this. And when it comes to cost, which