A landlady’s life

Setting boun­daries

The second part of our series “A land­lady’s life” is about trust, rules of the game and the appro­priate com­mu­ni­cation with guests.

in May 2022

“I don’t like buying a pig in a poke” writes a guest.
I had politely pointed out to him that he still had to pay the balance. He would rather pay cash on the spot. You never know what to expect. Aha, I think. What ter­rible things must have hap­pened to this person? Asto­nished – and to be honest, a little offended – I read the lines again. I am not a trained tourism expert. Like a virgin with a child, one day I had sud­denly acquired holiday homes. A few good pieces of advice here, some infor­mation from the internet there and hey presto, a company with rental con­di­tions and can­cel­lation rules was born. I wasn’t pre­pared for guests who didn’t want to buy pigs in a poke.

So, what should I do? Be generous and go along with it because I’m con­vinced he’ll like it? I could write an email, explain myself, mention the many positive comments from guests as proof of quality? Or I could insist on observing the rules that everyone else has fol­lowed so far without com­plaint? I pic­tured in my head what might happen when the guest arrives. Would he walk through the apartment with a magni­fying glass in his hand, looking for the pro­verbial hair in the soup? Or would he smile and hand the rest of the money to my employee on site and happily spend his holiday?

I know that guests like to interpret rules indi­vi­dually. That’s part of the game. Those who plan their own holidays like to have ever­y­thing perfect. The most popular inter­pre­tation of the rules is the arrival and departure time. It’s won­derful when the flat is ready for occu­pancy at the chosen arrival time and the departure can take place in peace and quiet after a lei­surely breakfast. Unfort­u­nately, we have to be the spoil­sports here because the next guest would also like to arrive earlier and, of course, have a pro­perly cleaned apartment. This is catch-22 or, to stay in the animal kingdom, the dog is trying to bite its own tail. On one occasion a guest had opti­mised his planning so that he could arrive early on Saturday morning and leave late on Sunday evening. All for the price of an over­night stay. He thought that was logical. I didn’t.

Guests also like to be geniuses at opti­mising the number of people tra­velling with them. Two couples told me that, firstly, with a total of four children under the age of three, they would fit per­fectly into a four-person apartment and, secondly, they wouldn’t have to pay any extra because children under the age of three were free. With my veto, I at least saved the young parents’ holiday – and perhaps also their fri­endship. Because maxi­mising the number of people per square metre rarely cor­re­lates with the satis­faction of the fellow tra­vellers. After brief con­side­ration, they decided on two apart­ments.

As a landlady, I have learned, I am a mixture of coun­sellor and the­rapist, imple­menter of creative ideas and strict edu­cator. By the way, I am still gra­teful to the pig in the poke man back then. His email was a kind of wake-up call for a landlady. It made me realise that there are limits and I have to set them. After careful con­side­ration, I wrote a fri­endly can­cel­lation letter to him and asked for his bank details. Nowadays one would say “better no booking than a bad booking”. I simply didn’t want to welcome anyone as a guest who thought he was being cheated before he even arrived. What hap­pened next, however, was a small miracle. The guest wrote to me by return of post: no, no, he didn’t mean it that way. He would love to come and had already paid the balance. That’s more like it, I thought.

Published: May 2022