The apartment is centrally located, well decorated and spacious (large kitchen and living areas) in the city center, and the wifi is fast for our work usage while traveling (there is also an elevator in the building, huge plus for us overpackers).
When we first arrived she did all she could to ensure we had a nice check-in, being flexible to accomodate our later check-in time (flight was delayed), giving us several ideas for eating out, a tour guide suggestion, as well as a local market for a specialty item we were looking for, and she was initially very responsive in the WhatsApp text thread she started.
The only areas that were of concern were:
When we arrived she mentioned (she had found out the day before) that the upstairs bathroom was not useable and had a bad smell. We didn't realize until after she left, just how bad the smell was. The next morning when we alerted her to the bad smell, she responded quickly by bringing by bottles of drain cleaner and air spray to try to help.
Unfortunately it did little to help with the smell and made the entire upstairs area, and some of the downstairs smell so bad, we had to stay out of the apartment as much as possible.
The only thing that helped (somewhat) with the smell, was to leave the windows open. BAut there is a lot of street noise and traffic (a large bar/nightclub directly outside the kitchen window), so we were limited to only opening them during the day when we had to leave the house. Turned out she would need to have all of her pipes replaced in the wall, in order to fix the smell, and that could not be done while we were in the apartment.
She did leave us a large box with candy on the last day, to try to make up for the issue, which was a nice gesture.
One thing to note is if you plan to use the whole apartment,(both bedrooms & bathrooms), you must tell her in advance or the 2nd bedroom will not be useable or ready. We found this strange, but will know for next time.
Lastly, leading up to check out, there were no instructions in the reservation or given to us verbally as to what to expect or what to do before we had to check out of the apartment. Leading up to our 10am check out, she was suddenly unresponsive and did not reply to our questions in the Airbnb app or whatsapp about what we should do. After waiting several hours to hear back, we were left with no choice but to leave the keys under the front door mat.
Ultimately we travel a lot through Airbnb, and know that sometimes things thappen, but its important to be completely transparent, honest and quick with communication to ensure the best guest perience.
While she is kind and tried to be helpful, communication was a bit of a challenge. So in fixing a few small things, it would make this a 5 star experience in our book.