(TL;DR at the end. Exchanges are copy pasted from messages between the host and myself).
My husband booked this Airbnb for me as part of his wedding present to me as we had gotten engaged in New Orleans a few years ago. The first night was a Saturday and there was quite a bit of noise (talking, shouting & loud music) coming from the unit downstairs until around 12:30/1am. We figured maybe this was just because it was a Saturday night, but the same thing happened Sunday night into Monday morning as well. In addition, passing trains lightly shake the entire room by the stairs and are pretty noisy for anyone who isn't a very heavy sleeper. We moved to the further room and slept well the first night. However the next night, there was a ton of noise from that room too and the bed also shook us awake, from about 6am on – people running up and down stairs, doors slamming, garbage trucks, seagulls etc. For context, we both wore 32 decibel earplugs and turned white noise on both our phones on opposite nightstands and could still hear the noise outside. We were surprised by this because we had thought the listing and many reviews had mentioned the place being quiet. My husband reached out with a message detailing the problems we were having and seeing if there was any way we could have a partial refund so we could move to a hotel. The noise by itself may have been manageable but the bed shaking every 15/20 minutes made it pretty impossible to get a decent night’s sleep.
When my husband reached out, I received a response back from one of the hosts telling us that he would make sure the noise downstairs stopped, but that was where the assistance ended. His message read, “Our listing notates that this home may be subject to sounds such as trains and boats due to the location being near the river. We are upfront and open about sounds”. I responded, “Can you direct us to the area in the listing that mentions the trains and boats when you’re able? Neither of us are seeing it so maybe there’s an issue with how it appears on mobile?”, trying to diffuse the situation by suggesting that the blame may lie on the app for not showing the info. I expected a response like “That’s unfortunate that it may not show that information on your end - I think this is a misunderstanding and sounds like the app contributed to that.” We eventually realized that those details indeed did not appear on the app, only through the computer layout. Instead, I received a pretty condescending response saying, “IN the amities section of the listing Airbnb offers a 'POTENTIAL FOR NOISE' section which is where we mention that you are in New Orleans and there are many sounds of the city. You are in a big city known for partying, trains, boats, and trolley, this potential for noise is obvious. We do not have to mention it numerous times - just as we never mentioned the home being quiet like your husband suggested.”
When I mentioned that the word quiet was in fact listed in their description, in the From Your Host section where it states “Our home is located in a quiet residential neighborhood” and “observe quiet hours in our home from 10pm-8am”, the response was, “It is in the listing and we did our due diligence within the parameters of Airbnb options. We as hosts are not required to notate every possible circumstance in the body of the listing, that would be impossible. This fact is not an argument nor is it something to be debated. At no point do we market the home as quiet - we are in downtown New Orleans. I have no idea how you guys came to this conclusion or idea and I hope moving forward that you have a lovely evening. [The downstairs tenants] will watch their noise level. If you have any issue with something that I can control, such as their noise level please let me know. I am here to help out where I can. ” I felt very patronized by his response (statements like "this potential for noise is obvious", "we do not have to mention it numerous. times", "this fact is not an argument", "I have no idea how you came to this conclusion", "something I can control"). Prior to this message exchange I had intended to let it blow over and not write a bad review about the noise level as it had in fact been written in the listing that there was city noise and I felt it was partially our bad for not reading through everything on the computer & just relying on the app. However, the attitude from the messages of this “superhost” in response to our concerns did not feel good and left us with a bad taste in our mouth at the beginning of our special trip. If your guest is having problems that you know you cannot control, thinly veiled contempt is not the way to go about resolving the situation. We ended up feeling so uncomfortable (and unable to sleep) that we lost about $1000 and paid for a hotel for the rest of our stay anyways. Even with this, we left the place spotless and even cleaned some old chewed gum off the underside of their coffee table that their cleaners had missed.
TL;DR: Not good for light sleepers, lots of neighborhood noise & bed/room lightly shakes frequently. Host responded to our concerns with condescension and deflection. Writing this review feels uncomfortable as I would not be surprised to have unpleasant backlash from the host based on our previous exchanges.