I do want to say thank you to Karen and Tim. The stay was wonderful. To benefit other future Airbnbers, i broke down my reviews by bullet points:
Location: The house is in the perfect location in Kona. Very close to beaches, Costco, restaurants etc…
Check-in: Check-in was smooth. Karen greeted us when we arrived. She showed us the guest house and talked about the house rules. It took about 25 minutes so you can guess there are quite a few rules to follow to stay in this house.
Amenities: You are staying in the guest house not the gorgeous main house with swimming pool showing on the listing. But the guests can use the swimming pool and hot tub till 9pm (not 11pm listed on the site). The guest house and the main house are connected by a “bridge” and they are very close to each other. There are no washer and dryer in the guest house (but they are listed in the listing) but Karen is kind enough to offer the laundry service at a cost of $15 per load. Karen also provided a few snorkeling gears and life jackets if the guests need it. If you decide to cook in the guest house, be prepared some missing cooking essentials. We could not find salt so we talked to Karen. Karen said normally this was not included but she would do us a favor. We scratched our heads since it was listed in the listing. Same as shampoo. There are 2 bathrooms and interestingly only 1 shampoo was provided. We again talked to Karen. She gave us a Korean brand shampoo and highlighted it was very expensive. We appreciated for her help but wasn’t shampoo supposed to be included?
Guest House: It has 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. Again, Karen was kind enough to set up the air bed in the middle of the living room for us (we had 7 people). The listing claims the house can sleep 7-8 people, which is true with the air bed and futon. I think it fits 4 people comfortably. The 5th, 6th, 7th person will need to sleep on the air bed and futon, which is not an issue for everyone but just be mindful of that. Free WiFi is provided but for some reason the signal was very weak in the guest house. I did Speedtest and it showed 0.2MB/S. I guess the WiFi was shared from the main house and that’s why? The whole guest house’s floor is covered by carpet. I guess it was summer with high humidity so i did feel the carpet was wet and filthy. A lot of ants and unknown insects were crawling on furnitures and carpets even though tons of ant traps and electronic insect repellents were placed in the house. I did have ants crawling on my arms and face couple times on the bed before i went to sleep. A flying roach landed on my wife’s arm once. Maybe it is common in Hawaii? Or maybe it was the weather? I am not sure. There are many “loose” and “fragile”decorative items on the shelves, windows, tables, etc… I feel they are good as a showroom but not as an Airbnb. I always had to remind my kids not to touch anything in the house and to be honest i felt very stressful.
House Rules: There are quite a few house rules. 1. Karen claimed that some furnitures are antiques and very valuable. For example, the guest cannot put the glasses (or anything cold) on the wood furnitures; instead, Karen mentioned there are sufficient bar coasters in the house. 2. The guests are not allowed to sleep on top of the decorative beddings. I am not sure what the reason is but it is one of the rules.
Trash management: You will need to bring the trash to the trash can in the garage. Karen cleared my trash once while we left the house and i did feel appreciated. Nevertheless, if she could give me a heads-up before going into the guest house it would be great.
Yard and Gardening: Beautiful yard with kawaii parrot, bird and tortoise (turtle). But be mindful you will need bug spray since the mosquitoes were really aggressive. Usually we got a few mosquitoes bites in a few minutes. According to one other guest review, it would be caused by insufficient B12 but this research was done in the 50’s and recent research done by University of Wisconsin found no relationship between mosquitoes and B12. The host has a few lovely dogs. You would hear they barked and walked by the guest house at around 10:30pm every night. Not an issue to me as we are dog lovers. It might be annoying for families sleep early though.
Noise: Karen communicated we would hear noises since the house is located at the intersection of two main roads.
Additional HI tax: It is listed in the listing so there is no surprise. But pls be mindful you will need to pay an additional 13-14% on top of the cost from Airbnb. It does not seem to be a common practice though. We stayed in another Airbnb in Hilo side and the host did not request that.
* Sent from a mobile phone so pls pardon me on miss spellings or wrong wording