The first thing Sarah Mitchell noticed was the smell. A sickening combination of stale alcohol, cigarettes and something far worse. She opened the living room door to find dog faeces on the floor. In an Airbnb that specifies it’s not pet-friendly. “I actually gagged,” recalls Sarah, 46, who owns a two-bedroom holiday cottage in the Cotswolds. “I’ve got two teenage boys, so I’m hardly squeamish, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The mattress topper in one bedroom had been removed, but an unmistakable smell of vomit and stains had leached into the mattress. “The worst part was realising somebody had slept in that bed, made that mess and then simply walked away, knowing full well another human would have to clean it up.” The duvet in the master bedroom also had urine stains, although Sarah admits she doesn’t know if it was from a human or a dog.
Sarah had rented out her cottage on Airbnb for three years without a serious problem. These nightmare guests, a couple in their thirties, booked a four-night break and exchanged friendly messages before arriving in October 2024.
“They seemed perfectly normal. They even asked for restaurant recommendations. I had absolutely no reason to think anything would go wrong.” But when Sarah arrived to prepare the cottage for the next booking, she found utter devastation.
“Every surface was sticky. There were empty wine bottles and cigarette butts everywhere. And there was black dog hair all over the sofa. I couldn’t understand how two adults could create so much filth in four days.”
The cottage needed specialist cleaning, replacement bedding and a new mattress. Sarah estimates the ordeal cost her £1,400, including a cancelled booking. “I spent the first hour crying, then got in touch with a local company who could fit me in for a deep clean. I cancelled a week-long booking that was due to arrive the following day, because there’s no way I could let someone stay there until I was sure it was habitable.”
Sarah contacted the guests, who admitted they had a dog, which went against policy. She asked them to pay the £300 for a deep clean, but they said the most they could pay was £200, which Sarah grudgingly accepted. “I just wanted to never have to speak to them again, so I accepted the payment and left them a negative review.”
Her experience illustrates the darker side of the booming short-term holiday rental market, where hosts can face everything from mountains of rubbish to extensive property damage.
Airbnb is now introducing new rules to stop hosts from imposing lengthy checkout cleaning lists on guests.
From 20th November, hosts can no longer demand chores such as stripping beds, washing dishes, or taking rubbish off-site for new bookings made after this date. Guests may still be asked to gather used towels or place dirty dishes in the sink. The changes are intended to address complaints from holidaymakers who resent paying cleaning fees while also being expected to leave properties spotless.
A petition set up on Change.org garnered more than 8,000 signatures within 24 hours of being posted. Harry Newington, the petition organiser, said: “These are not professional cleaning duties. They are ordinary aspects of living responsibly in somebody else’s property. We support Airbnb’s efforts to prevent unreasonable demands such as stripping beds, laundering linen, deep-cleaning kitchens or undertaking professional cleaning tasks. But washing the dishes you have used is not equivalent to cleaning an entire property. Airbnb’s policy fails to make this important distinction.”
When David and Emma Collins, both 54, decided to rent out their three-bedroom property in Cornwall, they imagined welcoming families enjoying a relaxing seaside break. The couple rented out their home for six weeks during the holidays while they booked a caravan in France.
A booking from a family of six for a long weekend kicked off their Airbnb experience. “They told us they wanted some quiet time by the beach, and I recommended some local walks and things to do with the kids,” says Emma. But neighbours contacted the couple late on Saturday night to complain about shouting and screaming coming from the property. She contacted the guests, who said they were a little drunk and apologised for being loud, but Emma was a little worried about her home.
Emma phoned her sister, who lived nearby, to check on the property on the morning the family checked out. “She called me on FaceTime, and she looked really shocked by the state of the place.” The open-plan living room and kitchen were covered in food, with chicken nuggets and crisps crushed into the floor. There were also cigarette butts in a Coke can, despite the no-smoking policy.
Upstairs, a towel rail was off the wall in an en-suite bathroom, a bathroom bin was overflowing with rubbish, and hair extensions were scattered across the floor. A mattress topper was completely soaked with a mixture of urine and vomit, and a clothes rack was broken. Emma says, “I couldn’t believe it. It was our first experience of renting out our home; we had a summer of bookings lined up, and I just wanted to cancel them all.”
The couple’s family spent two full days cleaning the property and fixing everything, and Emma admits she very nearly cut their stay in France short: “We’d worked so hard to create somewhere lovely, and people had treated it awfully. I don’t know how they sleep at night.” The couple pursued reimbursement, but documenting every broken item and cleaning expense was exhausting.
The guests refused to pay for any damages, so the couple had to take the matter up with Airbnb. “We had to photograph absolutely everything,” David says. “It felt as though we were having to prove we weren’t making it up.” They eventually received £300 for the damage, but it took several months.
Although the couple have welcomed holidaymakers since, they now impose stricter booking conditions and no longer accept reservations from guests without reviews or last-minute bookings. “We don’t want to assume the worst of people,” Emma says. “But once you’ve found your house trashed, you never quite relax again.”
In Emma and David’s welcome pack, they ask guests to put their rubbish in the correct recycling bins and empty the fridge, which they don’t think is too much to ask. “We don’t expect people to strip beds, or do any heavy housekeeping; that’s what the cleaning fee is for. But we worry that these new rules will mean people will take liberties and leave homes in a terrible state.”
Airbnb’s guest standards still require visitors to avoid excessive mess, and hosts can request reimbursement for unexpected cleaning costs or damage beyond normal wear and tear.
For some hosts, the issue isn’t whether guests should do housework on holiday. It’s whether basic respect for somebody else’s property is disappearing. “I don’t want people spending their final morning cleaning my cottage,” Sarah says. “I want them to enjoy themselves, pack their bags and go home happy. But there is an enormous difference between leaving a few dirty cups in the sink and leaving human waste in the bed.”
And for David, the solution is simple. “Treat a holiday home as you would a friend’s house,” he says. “You wouldn’t leave rubbish all over their floor or destroy their furniture. So why should it be acceptable just because you’ve paid to stay there?”
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