A landlady’s life

Peak season – time for com­plaints

Com­plaints in the high season are a topic of their own, our landlady thinks. Read here what she is par­ti­cu­larly con­cerned about around the summer holidays.

in August 2023

Once a year I get a “blue letter”[a warning letter to parents that their child may have to repeat the school year]. It’s not really blue and it’s usually an email, but it feels like the time when you did some­thing wrong at school and your parents were informed. I can now predict the time: It’s the peak season. And bad weather. The perfect time for com­plaints.

Now and again there are guests who have some­thing to com­plain about. For­t­u­nately, this happens very rarely with us and usually it’s some­thing minor that can be resolved quickly. And if not, then a per­sonal con­ver­sation helps. If guests notice that we care, then a broken dish­washer is a tech­nical problem, a pillow that is too hard is quickly replaced – none of this is a drama.

But there is a special category: the peak season com­plaint. This is dif­ferent, usually more detailed, tends to be fussy and often goes too far. And it only reaches us when the guest is back home. This was the case with a couple who had booked three weeks with us in the summer. They wrote that they had spent the entire holiday behind closed curtains. Using the terrace was out of the question. Either it rained or foot­balls landed on the coffee table. They listed in detail ever­y­thing that didn’t suit them and was missing. And that was really a lot. Even things that we had not pro­mised to provide. To emphasise their disp­leasure, they wrote that there were better and cheaper holiday flats and that they were closer to the beach. Bingo, direct hit! Or a guest who wrote to me that they had had a nice holiday but had left early because of the bad weather. He then listed all the things he didn’t like, ending with a missing ashtray. But I thought to myself, we could have given it to him. Why didn’t he just ask?

The main category of sea­sonal com­plaints, I have learned over the years, is not about pro­blems that could be solved. Some­thing went wrong on holiday and a culprit or guilty party has to be found. The weather gods don’t have an email address, land­ladies (or land­lords) do. Some­times I ask myself whether guests who write such e‑mails expect an answer at all? And what I should I write back?

There are many triggers that spoil peo­ple’s holidays. And of course, badly cleaned flats or false pro­mises are valid reasons. But this is not about com­plaints in regard to the holiday as a whole. But rather, little things are added up and blown up into a big storm. And I ask myself, is it perhaps guests who book early, who con­sciously decide on a holiday home, alt­hough many others were still free? And now they are dis­ap­pointed with the booked accom­mo­dation, but maybe also with them­selves and their decision? Or does the reason lie in the peak season price? While in the low season a barking dog in the village is a minor annoyance, the problem and its weighting drift further apart with each addi­tional euro. Or is it because – as psy­cho­lo­gists like to explain in silly season inter­views – holidays are a test of endu­rance for many couples and families? “The com­plaint season is starting” is what a landlord friend said the other day. And while some might suspect a new Netflix series behind it, we both knew imme­diately what was meant.

As a landlady, I can’t do any­thing about bad weather. Nor can I do any­thing about false expec­ta­tions. But we can make up for the lack of ash­trays, make the advan­tages of the village green more attractive to children who want to play football, or find all the spare pillows for guests to try out. If we know the pro­blems, we will take care of them. We just have to know that there is a problem. And an email after the holiday is of no use at all. Then it’s unfort­u­nately too late for both sides.

Published: July 2023

Cover­photo: Anja Bau­ermann / Uns­plash