Megan CurtinWell everyone has their first’s in life. First kiss, first date, first dance, and first heartbreak. Yesterday was the first time I experienced a bad interaction with Airbnb. To be fair it was not Airbnb’s fault but rather a 3rd party company that uses Airbnb to list their properties for rent. This 3rd company party is called Air Hospitality.
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What is Air Hospitality?
Air Hospitality is a property management company based out of Charlotte, NC. Their priority is to ensure your satisfaction; on your behalf, we manage the guest experience start-to-finish, from initial contact to booking, check-in to check-out and cleaning.
Think of Air Hospitality as a  third party company that does the dirty work for home owners who don’t want to roll up their sleeves, get into the dirty work and actually run their own listing. This makes Air Hospitality great for home owners, horrible for the guest experience.
Is This Article Going To Be One Sided?
Of coarse it’s going to be one sided. I’ve had two horrible experiences with this company and from reading other reviews it’s something this company struggles to fix. Complaints about the same issues have been written in numerous reviews and they have yet to find a solution for them.
Is Air Hospitality Efficient?
While they want the home owners to believe they strive for efficacy, they fail miserably with it on the guest end of things. They have to many hands in the pot if you know what I’m saying. When I rent through Airbnb directly from homeowners who run the house themselves they seem to care more about the renter overall. Owners who run their own property care about the guest experince more and the house condition.
[su_divider divider_color=”#f08287″]How would you review Air Hospitality?
Terrible, Awful, Misleading, Dirty, Poor, and any other negative adjective you can think of. Air Hospitality is absolutely one of the worst companies used through Airbnb I have experienced to date. They are smart AF and know how to  work the review system. I will get more into this later.
[su_divider divider_color=”#f08287″]My Personal Air Hospitality Reviews.
My review on home 1
Just want to give a shout out to whoever their photographer is. I work in the music business so I know the art of making something appear greater than what it is, and these photographers nailed it. The pictures are in no way a representation of the home. This home is like that place you first rented in college that on the outside is great and on the inside is good enough to get you by. The whole house smelled like ciggs. It just felt dirty and very run down all around the home and the outside. There was a hole in the wall, and scuff marks all over the walls. Downstairs bathroom didn’t have a hand towel. The furniture in the home was very random and impractical. It was like a house put together with furniture from a rummage sale, nothing matched and everything was decades used. Had I rented this space for a special one time getaway or a romantic trip I would have been even more irate.
I CONFIRMED MULTIPLE TIMES FOR A NOON CHECKOUT, PAID THE EXTRA $25 FEE AND SOMEONE CAME KNOCKING AT 10 AM and then knocked again at 10:30AM. If I had just asked once for a late check out and their was miscommunication, sure no worries. But I had to go through the process of paying an additional fee and asked them multiple times for the noon check-out to prevent something like this from happening. When you are on tour in a band 10 AM is about 6AM for normal people, so yeah everyone was pissed about it.
This home needs some serious TLC and the company needs some serious communication work.
I messaged the company and they did tell me they let the cleaning people know to come back later, but at that point the damage was already done and everyone was already up for the day.
Home 2
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/28466007 – Impeccable Getaway in Charlotte/ EV Charger equipped :
Should have known from the overgrown grass that hasn’t been cut in at least a month that the inside wasn’t going to be much better. While the home itself is beautiful the upkeep is shit. We walked in and the house was 58 degrees. NOTHING HAD BEEN CLEANED from the previous guests. All bedrooms were dirty, beds slept in, towels pilled on the floor and wrappers/garbage from the previous guest were left in the rooms. Pee was in the toilet unflushed. No hand soap. Overall just wasn’t checked-in on since the last guest. Had the house been cleaned this wouldn’t have been a bad place to stay. However I’m sure I would of had the same late check-out problem as I did today with the other home.
I contacted the “host” about the problems and they told me something like this had never happened before. They offered to pay for our dinner (up to $75 worth, which is nothing when there is 6 of us) while they got a cleaning crew over. I said no we just got in from driving the last thing we want to do is leave right away and then have to come back. Who knows how long it would take for cleaning people to actually get there as well. Just seemed messy. I asked for a refund which the agreed to but only after I canceled my reservation. Why is this important? Because once you cancel your reservation in Airbnb you can no longer leave a review. Which means I only got my money back in return for them to not get a bad review on it and no one will ever know via that specific booking. Smart on their end, shitty to the guest. People have a write to leave a review, good or bad to discuss the experince in which they encountered.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND BOOKING ANYTHING THROUGH AIR HOSPITALITY. Where my problems resolved? Sure. The cleaning cost of $90 would have been a more appropriate dinner cash offer seeing that is how much the cleaning fee is when you book. But all of these problems and two separate bookings happened within a span of one day. I can only image who else out there has experienced such things.
[su_divider divider_color=”#f08287″]Is there any good in Air Hospitality?
Sure, they respond back efficiently but that is useless when their response is in accordance to complaints. These complaints are all things that could have been, and should have been addressed from the start by managing the bookings properly. At the end of the day they helped me resolve my refund so I am thankful for that!
[su_divider divider_color=”#f08287″]Conclusion
Personally I think it’s harder for third party companies to be a invested in each home when it’s not actually there own home. They get to play house with someone else’s property. It’s like monopoly, you get to move game pieces on the board without actually loosing any money or property in real life.
While I don’t blame Airbnb for this disaster of a booking, I do think third party companies should have to be displayed more. Unless you are really looking out for it and researching your host, you might not even know you are booking through a third party or property company. Airbnb should force third parties to display a certain checkmark to allow guests to know who is running the listing. If it is people personally over seeing their listings they should get one color and third parties should get another. Let guest know what kind of host their dealing with right off the bat!
Additionally:
I have booked with a third party on one other stay and it was confusing. My details in the app did not match the details in the welcome binder found in the home. These were big details like check-out and check-in times, pet policies and wifi info. I was getting messaged from different numbers via the host and the rental property company. I didn’t now who to go to for questions or concerns. Just something to think about when booking with a third party. It doesn’t seem to go as easy and the overall experince was tainted for me.
Megan Curtin
