I never write bad reviews, so this really is a first for me. I am writing this because I think it is important to point out when a host lies in a listing.
This place is NOT an “entire home” as it says in the listing. Instead, it is 3 private rooms in a house that is shared with the owners: a husband, wife, 11 year old daughter, a dog and a cat. The host is listed as “Simona”, but I never met her; when I messaged her about the false advertising of the listing, she never responded. I do not know the relationship between Simona and the owners.
Every day that we were there, we would lock the entrance door to the house (photo #12) when we left in the morning to go to the beach. Every day when we returned late in the afternoon, the door would be unlocked (ostensibly because the owners prefer the door to be unlocked).
The owners opened and closed doors and curtains, and turned lights on and off whenever they liked. Had they advertised the listing as “private rooms” and “sharing some common spaces” then all of this would have been fine (and we would have chosen a different place). Guests need to know, in advance, whether they will be sharing a home or will have the “entire” home to themselves.
If one looks at photo #9, to the left of the red shelf on the wall, one can see glass french doors. If one looks carefully, one will see a woman in the photo. That is the owner of the house standing in her kitchen. That french door is often left open and, even when closed, because the door is glass, the owners can observe you at all times. Their kitchen table is just on the other side of the glass french door, a few feet away from the dining table pictured in photos #6-#9. Therefore, if you eat at that table, you can see them and they can see you. From where she is standing in photo #9, the owners can gaze directly at the queen-sized bed shown in photos #17-19.
In photo #4, on the left, there are two sets of glass double doors. The glass doors toward the back of the photo lead to the owners’ kitchen; the front set of glass doors are the doors featured in photos #2 and #7-10. The owners move around from their kitchen to the outdoor patio whenever they like. This starts around 7:00 each morning with the wife on the patio (dressed only in her t-shirt and underwear) calling for their dog. The dog and cat (not mentioned in the listing) move freely throughout the house.
The husband is also on the patio in the morning, sweeping or doing whatever he chooses to be doing. The back bedroom has a double glass door leading to the patio and that door is only partially covered by a curtain (see photo #24). Therefore, as the husband sweeps the patio, he can see directly into that back bedroom (for example, one morning as I was changing into my bathing suit).
The bathroom, which has a window, also faces the patio. There is no curtain on the window; therefore, the owners can see directly into the bathroom (see photo #27) from the patio and from the house. The swing in photo #2 is their daughter’s swing. Behind the vase on the left in photo #2 is the window to the bathroom. When the daughter is on the swing, she sits facing the bathroom. Therefore, anytime you use the bathroom, you are forced to look at each other. At night, we used the bathroom without turning on the light as an attempt to have at least some privacy.
To make matters just that much worse, the daughter (who appears to be a lovely child) is on the swing for hours every day (starting in the morning). The swing has a loud and terrible squeak each time she swings back and forth. The sound is so loud that it can be heard throughout the house.
It is worth noting that the owner asked that I sign a contract that was several pages long and in Italian. I was not comfortable signing it in part because I don’t speak Italian. More important, because they had been dishonest in the listing and because the listing did not say that I would have to sign a contract, I could not trust that what I was being asked to sign was innocuous. In the help section, Airbnb states that if a host wants you to sign a contract, you “should be made aware of this requirement before you book, and you’re not obliged to sign anything.”
In the end, our stay really was ruined. Because the daughter was constantly on the patio, we really couldn’t use it or the dining room opening onto it. We closed the doors to the 3 rooms in the back part of the house and stayed there so that we could at least have some privacy. Doing this, however, defeated the purpose of renting a big, beautiful, open house, with a large outdoor space.
Many people do not mind sharing a house; that is why Airbnb allows people to rent rooms in their house. But others prefer to rent an entire place, and have the place to themselves. Hosts are obliged to just tell the truth. A bait and switch is unacceptable.