For Christmas 2023, we invited my mother (70+) to spend holidays with us. This is her review of the place where she stayed a week:
There were several problems in staying at this place and I cannot recommend it to anybody.
The room was not as depicted in the pictures of the advertisement on the AirBnB page. The radiators were always cold in the nighttime, turning the room into an igloo. When we complained about the cold, the host came to investigate the place during daytime when it was indeed warm, and said the heating was working. However, the heating was continuously turned off during the nighttime. It would have been impossible to sleep there if it wasn’t for the external heater that my son, whom I was visiting in Tilburg, gave for me to produce some heat for the nighttime.
If there was any wind outside, there was freezing air coming from the window directly onto the person sleeping in the bed. When we complained about the poor insulation, the host said that there had been a storm outside and that’s why it was unusually drafty. My son who has lived for almost 10 years in the Netherlands said there was only regular Dutch windy weather, no storm whatsoever, during my visit.
The small bathroom emitted a strong, unpleasant sewage smell that was really disturbing during the nighttime. The tap was leaking water. In addition, the bathroom depicted in the pictures is not the one of this apartment.
The stairs leading to the room are extremely steep and at a point where they turn, do not have a proper handrail to hold on to. For this reason, they are downright dangerous for elderly or anyone with impaired balance. In the advertisement, there were no pictures of the staircase. The room and its furnishing are also poorly designed. The mattress was too springy, and the bed was too low. It is almost impossible to access the bed from the other side as there is very little space and it is occupied by a cloth rack the kind you see in shops. Thus, the room lacks a proper place where to hang your clothes. Furthermore, in the space between the bed and the cloth rack there is a ladder that is totally useless and only serves to deceive the guest about the size of the room in pictures.
The room as depicted in the advertisement was bright, but in reality, at least in the wintertime, it was very dark in the room. It only had two spotlights facing the wall.
I, with the assistance of my son, promptly reported all these problems to the host. She promised to fix the heating and arrange a plumber, later reporting that the heating was functioning (yes, in the daytime, but she turned it off during the night!) and that there was no bad smell in the bathroom. Instead of providing any useful solutions to our complaints, the host left a small box of chocolate, bought for 2.99 at Kruidvat (the orange sale price tag still attached to it). Later on, she would make a number of how she even offered chocolate for me as a token of goodwill. Upon further request to solve the problems, I found a perfumer in the mini bathroom, which should, in her opinion, have solved the strong bad smell, with the result that it only mixed with the bad stench. Furthermore, when e I returned to the room one evening after the host and apparently a plumber had been there, there was someone’s pee in the toilet. Later, the host made claims that we never reported these issues to her, which is simply not true. All in all, this room was the worst kind of room where I have ever stayed during my 70+ years of life, and the responses and “service” we received from the host was below all standards.
Overall, the room was like a small igloo where I felt completely imprisoned.
This concludes her review. On a side note, the host has been in communication with me all the time. She initially offered a reimbursement of 150 Eur (equivalent to 1.5 nights at her place or a 4 star hotel in the center), and then after we checked out she proposed 50Eur. I involved AirBnB in the resolution of this problem and they concluded that I was entitled to the refund of 30% (that comes from AirBnB and not the host). The host decided to refund additional 50 Eur. Overall, kudos for AirBnB and a bit less for the money-grabbing attitude of the host.
I encourage every host to spend one night in the room and experience yourself the staying. If that was the case, the cold, wind and smell will give you a stimulating environment where you can mature good ideas for improving the experience of your guests.
In this specific case, you want to make expectations very clear; you want to add a picture of the stairs and write in the description that your place is not suitable for anybody with restricted mobility.
Finally, please do not give a cheep chocolate bought at a discount with the price tag still on and expect that this will make up for staying in a cold and smelly place for a week. I am all in for making money with Airbnb (I am an host myself!), but if you focus on the packaging instead of the actual experience you are decremental for your business and for the whole short term rental community.
As final touch, the apartment was priced as a room at the Marriott in the center and the comparison is clearly not possible to make.
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