We very much have a love-hate relationship with Airbnb. A few of the Airbnbs we’ve booked have been the best places we’ve ever stayed in. However, there are a lot of chancers out there which have led to some pretty big disasters.
We’ll admit - with hindsight - some of these choices were a little ill advised, but in the pursuit of unique experiences we gave a couple of unusual ones a go. After two years travelling around the world we’ve put together the biggest duds we came across, and the lessons to be learnt from them.
Our worst Airbnb experiences
We’ll start with the place that nightmares are made of.
The Bondi Beach Pad - Australia
The expectation
We’d just arrived back in Sydney after two years away and decided we wanted to see what life by the beach was like. We booked a one bedroom apartment, a 10 minute walk from Bondi Beach, which we knew wouldn’t be fancy, but we never expected to be sharing with many unwelcome guests.
The reality - a cockroach infested hellhole
As soon as I walked into the apartment I recoiled at a sadly familiar and very much dreaded smell. Mortein.
Now Mortein, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is basically cockroach killer extraordinaire and it has a very distinct smell. Within seconds I’d seen a dead German cockroach (yes there are two types, Germans are the littler ones!) on the floor beside the surfboard!
I am personally a cockroach phobe, but I was relieved it was dead and hoped that was all there was. I sat down on the sofa and out the corner of my eye I saw a large American cockroach crawl out the bath and slide down the side before doing a little wiggle as it hit the floor and carried on its merry way.
I immediately called Joe to grab something to kill it as I sat cowering on the sofa. We scanned around for more and didn’t find any, so decided that the owner must have set off a Mortein bomb, killing or dazing the ones that were left. Once again we hoped that was it, so we went down to the beach and arrived back a few hours later to what can only be described as cockroach hell.
Bondi Beach….. without the cockroaches
Everywhere you looked they were there: crawling out the sinks, along the window sill and over the kitchen surfaces. Joe was spraying them like a man possessed and soon the body count rose to 13 within around half an hour.
By this point I am hyperventilating, and sending a message to the owner that he has a real problem here and we want to leave. He admits he saw one cockroach (hence the smell when we first arrived), but that he had killed it and there were no more. The apartment had cost us over $1,000 for a week and I wanted my money back.
I could feel cockroaches crawling over my skin - they weren’t of course - but I was mildly traumatised as the flat was tiny and we’d found them in every room! The owner then said that we could only have our money back if we sent him photographs of the cockroaches.
Now I don’t know about you, but if you perform a cockroach massacre do you line up the bodies and take photos? Nope, we don’t either. Like all murderers, we had disposed of the bodies (well, flushed them down the toilet)!
We found another one but this wasn’t enough for the owner. Panic was setting in as it dawned on me we couldn’t afford to lose the money and pay for another hotel.
As I’m sitting heavy breathing on the sofa, Joe gets up and leaves the apartment without a word. When he returns he is carrying something wrapped in tissue. In a moment of pure genius he had gone into the corridors and found some cockroaches and collected them ready for photographing in our Airbnb from hell (yes, this place was so bad that you could find cockroaches on demand).
I have never been so relieved in my life that he had actually seen more outside, but hadn’t told me for fear of making me more hysterical. ‘Evidence’ secured and we were refunded all the money, less one night and the cleaning fee.
I would have liked the whole lot back, but it was more than I’d hoped for at the beginning of the night.
Lesson learned
Only book Airbnbs with a healthy number of reviews, including in the season you are travelling.
This one had only four and just one from summer (when bug issues are much worse in hot countries). Having stayed in three Airbnbs in Sydney - this one being the worst - we will now not stay in any at the budget end of the spectrum.
I’m sure you’d be fine in the high end houses, but from what we’ve seen on the lower end we won’t be going there again. We realised you can actually stay in serviced apartments for similar prices which though not in such great locations are clean and comfortable and mercifully cockroach free!
“The local experience” in Jordan
So booking an airbnb in the Jordanian desert may not have been the best of ideas. However, hear us out - we had good reason to believe this would be an experience to remember…. well, we were right about that.
The expectation
It sounded so good! Staying with a Bedouin family in a beautiful red desert in the south of Jordan. We thought of starry nights and the chance to see another culture in an authentic, slightly less touristy way.
So this was a place which we look back on and realise it was probably a misguided decision! In general, our trip to the desert was filled with mistakes and we’ve put together a blog telling you all about how to avoid making the same errors.
Our tour into the desert was leaving at sunrise, so we wanted to stay nearby the night before. This prompted us to book a stay with a local in the village on the edge of the desert. On the surface it looked like a great option - you stay with a bedouin family and share dinner with them, experiencing local hospitality. Sadly, this turned out to be one massive con.
The reality - an absolute dive
As soon as we arrived, the host starting talking about us taking a tour. It had begun. He only wanted us to stay so that he could sell us into a tour with him. As soon as we told him that we’d already booked one, the disgruntled behaviour began.
I was cornered and told to help him fix his paypal account - not your standard Jordanian greeting! Not only was it all in Arabic, but I had no idea how I was supposed to link up his Jordanian bank account (which he didn’t even know the account number of) to PayPal. One hour later and the host got more and more angry at not getting the money he was due!
We were then shown into the living room and told this is where we’d be sleeping! On the floor with no pillows, no bedding, just a concrete floor with cushions which were covered in sand. The bathroom was a hole in the floor, which was simultaneously used as a drain for the shower and the toilet. And the sink was broken so there was no running water.
Our host then sat in the courtyard outside, blaring tv until 1am with all his friends he had invited round. We’ve written the full details of this experience here.
Lesson learned
The biggest problem here was that all the reviews only talked about how lovely the family was (which was strange, because the host was not very friendly!).
If no reviewer has mentioned the room or the property, then avoid. Most of the time guests are scared of leaving bad reviews, so write a passive review that is hiding the real truth, that it’s actually pretty crap!
The rural New Zealand hideaway
Surely New Zealand couldn’t fail at Airbnb?! This is a country famous for its hospitality. However, New Zealand also has its share of “special characters”.
The expectation
We’d been hiking all 9 Great Walks in New Zealand and looked for places that were close to the trailheads to rest up before starting the next one.
We found one on the South Island that looked good: private, quiet and with all the amenities we needed. But all was not quite as it seemed.
The reality - the nightmare child
This is the only Airbnb where there was little wrong with the property itself. The main problem was the crazy child of the family who made us feel like hostages in our own room!
The problems started when the owner introduced us to their daughter who immediately came in for a big bear hug, saying “we’re a huggy family”…..
A little freaked out, we went with the flow and Cat soon realised that the girl took a liking to her and in particular the phone in her pocket. The hug was essentially a frisk, trying to find out where it was hidden.
The mum had said that the kids were banned from technology: phones, tv and computer games in a bid to help them develop their imaginations.
Sadly, it had the opposite effect and made the child act like a heroine addict who hadn’t had a hit for days.
The child was so obsessed with Cat’s phone that one day she asked to borrow it and then did a runner with it! Confused, Cat asked the owner if she could have her phone back. The parent told her to follow the child and try to grab it…
When she went into the house, the child claimed she didn’t have it.
Being a master of hide and seek (seriously, she’s scarily good) Cat guessed immediately that it was under the girl’s pillow. She swooped in to get it and was greeted with a yell from the child, who started wailing and crying! The mum came in to grab the kid and shouted “RUN!” to Cat!
From then on, whenever we saw the daughter she death stared Cat. At one point we were in a coffee shop and the kid was in a car. She wound down the window, leant out and pointed at her, saying “I’m getting that phone”…..
Every night was lived in fear of the problem child trying to mug us for our phones!
Lesson learned
Keep your phones away from kids. You never know which will turn into a gremlin!
The teepee in Monument Valley: USA
Of all the duds on this list, the teepee is the one we were probably most disappointed about. We had high hopes for a truly unique experience. Well, it certainly was “unique”.
The expectation
Few things sound more idyllic than waking up to sunrise in a teepee at Monument Valley in Utah. Sleeping in the heart of the desert and seeing a bit of indigenous culture (no we hadn’t learnt from Jordan!) sounded like a pretty romantic way to experience one of those bucket list destinations.
Despite the hefty price tag, we thought the chance to wake up to a sunrise over Monument Valley having spent the night in a teepee would be worth it.
The reality - will we get hyperthermia?
Alarm bells went off when we arrived after dark to find two teepees on the property but not a person in sight. Both teepees were sealed shut which left us unsure as to whether we would be opening up the zip to find we had stumbled into someone else’s tent.
We bit the bullet and luckily our chosen teepee was empty. However, the bed and table were under what looked like incontinence covering (you know, those thick plastic sheets to protect the mattress 🤢). The plastic sheets weren’t hiding much as the “glamping teepee” was literally a concrete floor, bed and a picnic blanket on top. The night-time temperature in Southern Utah in winter is between 30-40F (0-5C)!
We thought perhaps we were in the wrong place. Surely for over $85 (in low season when the average motel had been costing us $35) there would at least be a sign telling you that you were at the right place! There wasn’t even information about where the bathroom was….
We thought we must have gone to the wrong place, so we drove off and spent the next half an hour scouring in the dark for any other properties that might contain our actual teepee. We thought that we surely hadn’t found the right place, that no one could leave a thin picnic blanket as warmth for a freezing cold desert night.
But alas we realised it had to be the right place and headed back. With the temperature below 0, and one thin blanket on the bed, we were in for a rough night.
We could see our own breath in the tent and I was beginning to wonder if we should go out and join the pack of dogs we could hear howling outside the tent for shared warmth.
It was a very long and cold night. After 8 hours shivering, we jumped out of bed raring to go at 6am to let the first rays of the sun thaw our frozen bodies. This is probably the first and only time that has happened (every cloud has a silver lining and all that 😂).
To this day, we’re still not sure if it was definitely the right teepee…..
Lesson learned
Don’t even think about “glamping” or staying in a tent in the winter unless you know it is properly kitted out. It’s rarely a good idea.
The “Penthouse apartment” in Tel Aviv: Israel
You’re probably beginning to see the trend now. However, this was probably one of the more normal places on the list!
Yep, even a penthouse in a really metropolitan city can suck.
The expecation
It was my Dad’s 70th birthday, so we wanted to celebrate in style. Having seen a “luxury penthouse” with a hot tub on the balcony overlooking the sea it sounded perfect.
We’d seen pictures and it looked great! My sister had even saved the photos from the website, which turned out to be a blessing later on when we tried to claim compensation from Airbnb.
The reality - the children’s camp
Joe and I were the first to arrive and were given strange instructions like “ask the security guard to let you into the building and up to the flat. Knock on the door and someone will open up….”.
This was the first alarm bell as the security guard was utterly confused and annoyed that he was being used as a concierge.
We were met in the flat by the father of the owner. who had as much of a clue about what was going on as we did.
After scouting around we discovered that one of the “three king size” bedrooms had a pair of children’s camp beds in it…..
Mildly horrified - knowing how much we’d paid for the apartment - I gingerly tried laying down. It was about 10cms off the floor and the bed immediately collapsed. We spent the next three nights hanging off the end of the beds, trying not to move an inch for fear of being immediately deposited onto the floor.
This was probably a scam from one of the developers as the whole building and area was under construction. There were holes in the ceiling, wires hanging out the walls and it was basically half finished. Someone sensing a quick buck chucked in a sofa, two beds and the children’s camp beds to sell to tourists at an exorbitant rate.
As soon as we complained, the owner offered us 10% of our money back! Airbnb wouldn’t help with a better offer either despite us going through the full complaints procedure. In the middle of this the owner changed the listing to try and claim that the camp beds were there all along.
Lesson learned
We stayed in several more Airbnb’s in Israel and the only thing we can tell you is - don’t do it. Absolutely none of them looked like the pictures, you have been warned : )
The “cosy apartment” in Jasper, Canada
You might be as surprised as we are that so many of the worst Airbnbs have been in some of the richest countries in the world: Canada, the USA and New Zealand. Well, here’s another for you!
The expectation
Jasper is one of those places we’d always wanted to visit. This stunning national park is famous for its dramatic mountains, plethora of wildlife and beautiful lakes. We booked what we thought would be a cosy apartment near to the park.
The reality
We really didn’t have any luck in Canada with Airbnbs, but this one came as a particularly big surprise. If you’re reading this and you’re Canadian, you might not find it quite as shocking as we did, but here goes.
We were staying with Joe’s parents in a basement apartment which is pretty common in Canada. The house is split in two, with different guests staying on each floor. We were welcomed with a note saying “there is a young family upstairs, so don’t complain about the noise” - not the kind of greeting you expect when paying $200+ a night. But this wasn’t actually our complaint.
Our gripe was the war over the air conditioning.
Being from the UK, we’re used to a little bit of cold and don’t mind sleeping without the heating on, it wasn’t even that cold being August! However, the people in the top apartment had full control over the air conditioning/heating for our apartment too. And they clearly wanted to sleep in near tropical temperatures.
What made things even worse was that the beds were placed directly underneath the very powerful air vents!
The tenants upstairs boiled us alive and we had no ability to turn off the vents that blasted hot air in every room.
Each vent also sounded like a jet engine, and it wasn’t even a constant noise, it came on and off as the room began to cool. Even with all the windows open we all got up with splitting headaches from having heat blasted in our faces all night long. We wished we hadn’t booked three!
But this wasn’t the end of the issues.
A love of taxidermy
The idea of hunting for sport is something we’re definitely not fans of.
Well you can imagine our horror when we arrived to find what looked like a museum of hunting trophies. There were stuffed animals EVERYWHERE - all over the walls, and on the side tables. They weren’t small ones either, they were huge!
You’d go to sleep at night with a stuffed wolf on the wall glaring at you! Add in a bear and even a stuffed racoon and you have a scene that looked like it belonged in a horror movie.
Lesson learned
If you’re staying in a very touristy area, expect Airbnbs to be a rip off. The Rockies in Canada were rife with people charging a fortune for accommodation that really didn’t meet expectations.
Anything in Forks, USA
Ok, so how bad can a campsite be? Well, you’re about to find out….
The expectation
We arrived in Forks to visit Olympic National Park. This is a spot with beautiful beaches, wild sea stacks, mountains, rainforest and great hiking trails.
To help keep the costs down we decided to book one night camping and the other in a trailer. Both had good reviews and looked like they’d do the job.
The reality - the campsite
Well, you know where this is going. Let’s start with the campsite.
Firstly we wondered if we were in the right place. The campsite looked like an industrial estate with machines and equipment littered everywhere. We assumed we’d stumbled onto private property until we saw a tiny sign for our patch.
Facilities make a big difference when camping - a clean toilet block can make everything a lot better. Well, this one was about as bad as it gets. For over 50 sites there were two toilets. Not two toilet blocks, two toilets! Furthermore, the toilet was so small you couldn’t even shut the door, your knees would literally not fit, meaning EVERYONE saw you on the loo.
We know camping isn’t glamorous, but when you pay $40 for a camping spot, you expect to able to close the toilet door!
The reality - the trailer
So we weren’t expecting much from the trailer. We knew it looked small and pokey, but it was somewhere to sleep. We were greeted with a caravan that was basically falling apart. Furthermore, the owner had put a piece of paper up saying “only a couple of the lights will work!”. So after sunset we found ourselves sitting in the dark.
Then there was the shower. You never get much in a trailer, but this was taking shabby-chic to a whole new level. It felt more like a bucket and hose!
Again, we wouldn’t have a problem if it was cheap, but this crap hole was $100 a night.
Lessons learned
Go for legit campsites as the ones on Airbnb are frequently a patch of dirt with crappy facilities. If you can get one run by the national parks all the better. Scrutinise the trailers pictures and reviews as we’ve had both good and bad experiences.
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