This was only our second experience with Airbnb after the concept was recommended by our son. Our first experience was amazing. We received excellent reviews from our hosts and stayed a total of 3 nights with them. If this was what Airbnb was about we were definitely sold on the concept.
We booked with Daniel and Zoe for a one night stay intending on leaving early the next morning to reach the ferry on time in Picton.
The room looked perfect for what we needed (clean, tidy and comfortable) no issues there at all.
We inadvertently broke one of the many house rules-our son and his partner came back inside the studio with us after we had been out for dinner together, and spent probably no more than 30 minutes . After receiving a text message from Daniel and Zoe we explained that our son had left the property. This lead to us being evicted at 10pm at night. No hotels or motels were open at this time of night- leaving us nowhere to stay.
We do not consider our son either a visitor or guest (he is whanau/family)- but do accept that we had broken the house rule pertaining to this.
We are an older couple (51 & 60) so the prospect of sleeping in our car was a daunting one. Also to be evicted with a 30 minute timeframe left us scrambling as we were visitors to Christchurch and didn't know our way around.
A little bit of compassion and dialogue would have been useful we feel. I am a teacher and work with students who "break the rules" on a daily basis- imagine telling a student they are excluded from school for an inadvertent mistake with 30 minutes to collect their belongings? Restorative practice is about an approach to life grounded in beliefs about equality, dignity, mana and the potential of all people. There was none of this shown by Daniel or Zoe in their communication with us over the matter. It almost seemed as though it was property and profits over people. Daniel and Zoe can rightly say we broke the house rule of having visitors/guests we can't argue with that. It was the way in which everything unfolded after that which has left us totally devastated by our Airbnb experience with them.
Consequently we would neither recommend staying in this studio hosted by Daniel or Zoe, or use Airbnb ever again.
Note: perhaps have ALL of your house rules visible for guests rather than a drop down "See more details" section.