Patience and Anger-Management Required

People are vacationing again; mainly in rural, lake, mountain, beach locations. While most guests are great there are many that are not. Some guests don't treat your property with care or even try to make an effort to respect it.

These are images from my rentals. I'm sharing because this is the stuff that happens. It makes me angry when I have to deal with this, but I realize I have to get over it and move on. (I discuss laundry in detail here so I won't in this post.) I find it extremely rude that a guest would have a bloody incident and leave sheets and a duvet cover like this and not even leave a note acknowledging this or saying sorry.

This is how some guests will treat your bedding.

We had a guest put a cast iron skillet in the dishwasher. This is beyond perplexing. With all of the stainless and non-stick skillets in the rental, the guest chose cast iron. Most people will do that when they know how to use cast iron. The number one way to protect the skillet is to barely wash it. So imagine how pissed I was to find the cast iron skillet inside the dishwasher (guests are supposed to empty the DW before they depart).

Cast iron skillet revived after it went through the dishwasher.

Some guests do try and help and will do laundry as they use towels during their stay. But they do not make the effort to fold them correctly or even stack that neatly. Fortunately this is an easy fix. I refold and stack to make a nice presentation. Learn how to fold towels correctly here.

My folding on the left, guest folding on the right.

We are fortunate to have a busy rental season this year. Most reservations were cancelled or didn't come in until just before summer started. This makes us grateful to have the income. But we do ask ourselves if the effort is worth the income.

Finding good cleaners is hard in many seasonal areas. This may require that you do the turnover yourself because you can count on you. Be prepared to have these issues from time to time. Leave your ego at the door and just get to work and get the rental clean and ready for the next guest.

It hard not to be insulted and mad when you arrive to your property that you have left in pristine condition and find it treated badly. However, this is a hospitality business so you have to set the anger aside and learn patience. Guests are number one. Make them happy upon arrival by keeping that as the reason why you are offering vacation rentals. It's not about you, it is about them.