Airbnb’s website states that it expects hosts ‘to create listings that are honest, clear, and helpful to potential guests’. The owners should have read this portion of the hosts’ site much more carefully. Potential guests should also be alerted.

The flat that my husband and I rented was not at all as advertised and we could barely make ourselves remain a single night (much less the four we booked and prepaid for). What’s really on offer in this eco friendly flat includes a thoroughly and densely cluttered two level construction-site-in progress, with a tiny and barely functional kitchen, an upstairs bedroom (i.e. open concept living space) in which the main bed consists of a mattress on the floor (with several moldy couches scattered nearby) and, downstairs, a bathroom that is a space with only two actual walls (a third consists of a hanging plastic sheet and the fourth of a folding door that does not really work) and is devoid of any privacy. There isn’t just ‘a’ dog, but two large and furry (if friendly) dogs, as well as a cat, living next door in the owners’ (attached) flat, who roam about the common space that the owner shares with the guests and into the flat if allowed. Allergy sufferers be warned! All of this would have been disappointing enough, but for us the rising damp and scent of mold that pervade the flat were just too much. We got ourselves out of there and into a clean and fresh-smelling place the next day.

The photograph that the owners have mounted is, in fact, a photo of the deck of their own flat; there is no such space outside the rental flat. This place is neither as exclusive nor as ‘panoramic’ as the owners promise.