I can say I had the worst stay of my whole life at her place!! ABSOLUTELY DON’T RECOMMEND.
This was our final destination in a 3weeks trip in 6-7 different cities (all Airbnbs in Spain and Portugal ) and was the worst experience out of them all.
At first she was really nice and cooperative with our arrival time. She even helped with our luggages like other Airbnbs we had, she had a map marked up for us with attractions.
She had the check in on her ad at any time after 4pm. we arrived at 9pm as coordinated and promised, but this came back at me later during our stay like we did not talk about it and we just showed up late! I had asked her for a favor to let my old parents to leave their luggages for a few more hours and have a late checkout since their flight was a few hours after mine and she kindly suggested to call a cab for them, which again changed later and she bailed on us literally last minute. So my poor parents had to come with me to the airport in the morning and sit on uncomfortable airport chairs for the entire day instead of relaxing or going around the city. If she hadn’t promised/accepted I would’ve planned it differently.
The first night that we arrived, The place was dusty (have video and pictures of it still) all the sheets had a terrible sweat smell and hair on them. I didn’t want to bother her at night so I texted in the morning asking nicely to bring us some clean sheets and she made a HUGE deal and drama out of it. She was first offended that there’s no way the sheets are not clean!!! I was like I’m sorry but somehow they still smell and look used, but that’s ok we can wash them, can you just bring us clean blanket covers? And OMG! She contacted Airbnb instead of fixing and communicating it with me. So on our first day in Lisbon, we had to wait for the machine to finish washing and draining grey water (and there’s no dryer btw!), instead of using our time to see around as planned, we missed our tour that we had paid $180 for in Sintra, and go back and forth with Airbnb to explain what happened and send them pictures and prove that I was right!!! Sooo unnecessary, annoying, stressful and such a waste of time for a 4day trip! At first she said she won’t come to fix our issue because she was at work, but then later was convinced by Airbnb to come and give us clean sheets. Which at this moment everything was already washed and half of the day was gone! She came with an attitude that you are lying, I’ve never had this issue and I was at work and you made me come here....
I was thinking to myself the whole time that why do we have to go through all this, when she could just nicely bring us extra sheets even if didn’t believe that ours were not dirty! Why did we had to stay behind our plan and lose money and have a headache and drama for such a simple request?! If she works, that’s not my problem, she should have a help for the time she can’t be available. I’m not her tenant that I can wait for her to come later on a weekend when she doesn’t have work! We were only there for 4 days and wanted to enjoy our time and she absolutely ruined it for us first with that attitude and behavior and then with insects in her house that I still have their pictures and lastly with bailing on us for something that she said she’s ok with (as a favor) and we counted on her words and she just changed it last minute!!!
Even an hour counts for a tourist Laura!!!
In my opinion, good hosting is not just smiling in the beginning, it’s about the entire experience and what you offer to your guests to make their stay memorable and enjoyable so they would want to come back!