Tales from an Airbnb host

In the beginning…

Firstly, let me introduce you to the team: 1) my mother: a retired high school teacher, 2) my brother: an accounting whizz (our fearless leader) and 3) me: an introverted scientist. Yes, we make quite the eclectic mix!

Five years ago my brother decided that our family desperately needed to source a viable means of generating our own income, one that would hopefully sustain us into a very uncertain future. We were fortunate enough to own a house in a popular seaside suburb and he decided that the property itself would be our saviour.

My mother and I were horrified when he suggested that we throw all our money into remodelling the small upstairs of our house into a self-contained studio apartment and rent it out to numerous complete strangers. But as we knew that his business acumen was far better than ours, we agreed to support him and intrepedly enter the guesthouse industry.

The stories that follow describe the most memorable experiences that we have had and the colourful characters that we have encountered while running this business.

THE AGED SUPERMODEL & THE PUSS

Our first guests were an elderly Swiss couple. The wife mentioned to us that she used to be Ms Switzerland back in the day and it was certainly clear that she was very well put together and rather fashionable.

On the morning of their second day with us, the couple, looking very distressed, approached my brother. He was extremely concerned that they did not like our apartment and that this would spell the beginning and end of our little business. They told my brother how they had gone to bed the previous night, having gone through their usual night time routine; with the wife putting on her night cream, her satin eye mask and earplugs (necessary due to her husband’s snoring) and meticulously smoothing out the duvet until everything was “just so”. They then drifted peacefully off to sleep encased in brand new 400 thread count, Egyptian cotton. In very broken English, the wife told my brother that she had woken in the middle of the night and that “the puss! the puss!” was on top of her! Trying hard to suppress his amusement, my brother apologised profusely and explained that “the puss” was in fact not a deadly, diminutive form of an African lion but rather a neighbour’s domestic cat.

You see, back then, there was a beautiful toffee-coloured kitten that had taken a fancy to us and enjoyed visiting our home. However as it was not our cat, we didn’t have any control over its whereabouts and did not realise that she also liked to visit our guests. Incidentally, the phrase “not our cat” would be used many times to get us out of trouble!

The next to stay with us were two sisters from America. Shawntai and Shadiya were in their early 20s and from the get go it was clear that they were very eager to party, hard! They had no interest in visiting any of the historical monuments or exploring the natural beauty of their new environment, all they wanted to do was hit the nightclubs.

Around 10 pm on their first night they got dressed up and disappeared into a taxi. We all woke up (still very unfamiliar with having strangers in our property) in the early hours of the morning when we heard one of the sister’s banging on our front door pleading to be let back into the apartment (she seemed to have lost the keys). By mid morning there were still no sign of the older sister and at this point the younger sister, Shadiya, was sober enough to start to notice her sister’s absence too…

After some stern words from my brother, Shadiya reluctantly proceeded to tell us a vague story of what transpired the previous evening: They had gone to a club in town and somehow during the course of the night, they had both managed to “lose” their fancy new iphones (apparently one was flushed down the toilet). While they were partying they made many new “friends”. The last Shadiya saw of her sister was her going off arm-in-arm with a male “friend”. She continued to dance the night away and then (quite astonishingly to us) successfully managed to catch a taxi back to our house.

Lunchtime came and went and still there was no sign of Shawntai. At this point, Shadiya was literally wailing and screaming in the streets. Just as we were about to report Shawntai missing to the police, lo and behold she arrived in a sleek black Mercedes, only half dressed and not at all bothered or apologetic about the chaos she had created.

Having taken stock of what our apartment looked like on that second day (pizza smeared on the walls (!) and everything in complete disarray) we reported them to Airbnb and asked them to find alternative accommodation as they certainly did not seem to be the right fit for us and our quiet conservative neighbourhood!

PANIC OVER THE PANIC BUTTON

We pride ourselves in making sure that our guests feel safe and secure while staying with us. We belong to an armed response service which provide their customers with what is called a “panic button” ( a button that forms part of a key fob). When you press the panic button it sends a high priority signal to the security company’s 24-hour monitoring centre, they then dispatch the nearest armed response vehicle and officer to your home. They normally have a range of about 50 m or less.

We had a very sweet, rather naive and not very well travelled Canadian woman come to stay with us during our second month in the guesthouse business. As part of the standard welcome spiel we mentioned to her that there was a panic button on her key set and should feel free to use it if necessary (we didn’t think to explain all the details to her at the time as we thought that it was pretty self explanatory, how wrong we were…).

After a few days, we touched base with her to ask if everything was in order. She responded by telling us that our panic button was broken. We were rather confused as when we tested it, it worked perfectly. We approached her again and asked for more details. It turned out that she thought that the panic button could be pushed anywhere in the country and immediately armed guards would rush to her aid!

THE NORWEGIAN & THE KNIFE

We received a request for a booking from a young girl from Norway (so young in fact that her parents ended up officially booking as Airbnb requires you to be over 18). She excitedly told us that she would like to rent our apartment so that she could go on holiday with her boyfriend. She continued to tell us that this would be only the second occasion that she had spent time with her boyfriend, as he lived very far away, in Zimbabwe.

They had apparently met online and she had persuaded her (rather witless) parents to pay for him to fly all the way over to Norway to stay with the family. The visit did not go too smoothly and the young couple decided that it would work out better if they spent time together “in Africa”. Her parents haplessly paid for the both of them to travel to Cape Town and they settled into our apartment. Sadly, for the both of them, things did not seem to go any better in Africa…

In a dramatic twist of events, my brother started receiving texts from the Norwegian girl stating: “Help!” and then “He’s gone to the kitchen to get a knife”. Having no context to these texts, my brother decided it was best to call the police. He rushed off to the apartment and together with two policemen, tried to get to the bottom of the matter.

It turned out that the Zimbabwean did not in fact want to kill the girl or harm himself but rather became really hungry and needed to cut his food midway into a rather placid disagreement with his very culturally-different girlfriend. The girlfriend’s mood was anything but placid by the time my brother and the policemen rocked up.

After heated discussions over Skype with the Norwegian girl’s parents, it was decided that the couple had to split up and go their separate ways. They both ended up departing from our apartment much earlier than expected.

THE FIRST & LAST SUPPER

We always try to strike the right balance between interacting and engaging with our guests and giving them enough privacy. However it has often been to our detriment (and our guest’s oblivious delight).

One such incidence was when my brother casually professed his love for Indian food to an elderly couple from Mumbai. They insisted that he join them for dinner and made it impossible for him to turn down their invitation. Having not wanted to take any chances with sub-par or unfamiliar ingredients and to maintain a strong connection to their heritage, prior to departing from their home, the couple had loaded their suitcases with a wide variety of their favourite food and drinks. They therefore proclaimed that the meal would be 100% authentic Indian, like nothing that my brother had ever had before.

My intrepid brother quickly learnt that our South African take on “authentic” Indian food was very much not what the local Indians consumed on a regular basis. He made it through the entire seven course meal relatively unscathed and thought he was on the home stretch being at it was approaching midnight ( surely the couple would want to dismiss their guest and head to bed?). Alas there was still one more challenge that my brother had to face. With a triumphant flourish the husband produced a strange looking glass bottle. He explained that it was customary to end dinner with a traditional aperitif and lucky for him they had brought their favourite all the way from India. It was made from some sort of fermented fruit, coffee, milk and heaps of sugar. Turning slightly green at this description, my brother bravely took a sip. With the ever present fear of a bad review hanging over his head, he thanked them profusely for the delicious meal but, as politely has possible, said he just could not manage to finish the drink.

What confused my brother the most was not the strange flavour of the drink but rather the fact that, with all the caffeine and sugar, how it can be an after-dinner refreshment. He couldn’t sleep the whole night from just a few sips! And that was the first and last guest dinner invitation that my brother ever accepted.