We stayed here with our family from Spain, Switzerland and the US -- four adults and four kids. We try to vacation together every couple of years, usually in the Mediterranean.
I'll start with the good: The house has a great view. There is a road between the house and the ocean, which you can't really see in the pictures, but it's not very busy (except at sunset).
Josefa was pretty responsive.
But...
This house is HOT and has no air flow. It was bearable starting around 4 am (we know, because we couldn't sleep much!), but from about 3 pm to then the sun shone on the front of the house and heated the bedrooms and bathrooms way up. We're probably talking 90+ degrees F in one of the bathrooms, and well over 85 degrees F in the bedrooms -- at night.
When we booked the house the listing said central AC. When we arrived, we found there was one anemic AC unit in the living room (even sitting next to the AC with it set to 21C per Josefa's instructions, we were sweating). Josefa sent a couple of people to check the AC unit, and they stood in front of it and said, "What? It works!" It's true that the unit blows air, but it does not cool the room at all. You could sit next to it and sweat.
But the bedrooms were where the real issues started. There were no AC units in that wing of the house. Josefa told us to keep the windows open and the shutters shut, but the shutters didn't let in any air, so we needed to sleep with the windows and shutters open. That made us a bit nervous with kids sleeping in their own rooms in the very populated and touristy area, and with lots of wasps in the eaves of the house (see below). It was especially a problem if we went to dinner (which we usually wanted to because it was too hot to cook), because the house would heat up like an oven when we were gone, and would stay hot all night. We tried leaving the windows open and the shutters closed when we were gone, but it didn't make a difference.
The layout of the house is the real culprit -- air just can't flow through the bedrooms and bathrooms and the (very loud) ceiling fans don't move the air through the rooms.
Now, we have stayed in lots of places in the Mediterranean where there is no AC, but with fans and air flow it's ok, even in August. I'm currently at my in-laws' near Alicante, where this is no AC, but we're doing fine.
Josefa's son Eddie initially apologized for the central AC listing mistake and offered partial compensation. I said I'd prefer some floor fans or something so we could get some good rest, but the owner of the house refused to provide those (I gather Josefa and Eddie, who do not live on the island, are the property managers). After a few days sweltering, Josefa offered us a refund if we left, but there was no place else to go (it was Menorca in the high season).
Josefa finally offered us a 500 Euro refund -- but when Airbnb contacted her about it a few days, she said she changed her mind. She never contacted me again personally to tell me that.
As an aside, this issue should have been covered by Airbnb's guarantee, but they claim they don't have enough documentation, despite the hosts admitting the listing error in messages on the Airbnb platform. But that's another issue.
The house has a lot of other problems, too.
The pool is full of broken and sharp tiles. It is not particularly safe, especially for kids -- we got lots of bleeding cuts. The pool edges are in rough shape, with shaky tiles near the edge.
There is a problem with strong sewage smells coming up through the shower of the bathroom near the entrance. When the door was left open, the entire house was incredibly smelly. When closed, the "fan" in the room didn't do anything to relieve the smell. The bathroom was unusable.
There are lots of wasps, which isn't totally shocking in this location, and we appreciated that when we reported the first nest we found (which was right next to the kitchen) Josefa sent someone promptly to take care of it. However, it seems like they just knocked down the one nest, and when we came back the wasps were already building a new one. The next day we found 3 more wasps nests in the eaves.
If you see the pictures and think about using the grill and eating outside, just know that will likely be untenable unless they get some serious pest control out there. We never dared to eat outside because we knew we'd get swarmed, and we have a couple people with allergies in the group.
It's clear that when Josefa started managing the house, they painted and put up some new art, which is nice, but the deeper issues noted above hadn't been addressed as of our stay.
We didn't expect a palace by any means -- we are used to renting all sorts of houses and they mostly have some sort of issue -- but what we did expect was help rectifying what was an honest mistake (Josefa didn't know what Central AC was, she said). Honestly, I would have been super happy if they had provided a few floor fans to circulate the air and would have left a much better review.
I was also pretty offended by the host's assumption -- and by the assumption of the woman who came to look at the AC unit -- that we expected frigid temps in August because I'm American, but as I noted above, I think this international group has enough experience in this region to know when there is a