Are you renting your soul to Airbnb?

Signing up as a host with Airbnb brings into your life more than just a few passing guests and a little extra income. There’s a darker side to the operation.

The chief executive, a man called Brian Chesky, appears eerily from time to time in my inbox: a wholesome-looking bloke in a cable-knit jersey with a pet puppy called Sophie Supernova, and tells us how well we’re doing. In the first quarter of this year the company had net income of $264mn. He owns 10 per cent of the stock. Sophie Supernova must appear high on the Global Rich Puppy list.

Holiday season is upon us. I am lucky enough to have a couple of barn conversions on my Somerset farm to let on Airbnb. I like it when new people turn up and I like it when they go. The phenomenal rise of Airbnb in the UK is also a function of the provincial hotel industry, which remains dire unless you are prepared to fork out nigh on £1,000 for a weekend at a pretentious bed and breakfast masquerading as a boutique hotel. Once you strip away the jokes from Fawlty Towers, it becomes a forensic depiction of small-town three-star accommodation. No wonder a quarter of holidaymakers now use holiday lets.

Living close to the Glastonbury site, I shamelessly put up my prices during the festival and enjoy a bit of a bonanza. I will not name the band who stayed last year because if I were them, I would be ashamed to be identified. After four days the recycling bins were full to overflowing with mineral water bottles and hummus containers. Right at the bottom was a single bottle of beer. From an entourage of 20. The band had even plumped the cushions before leaving — not something I could ever imagine Keith Richards doing.

When guests arrive I prefer them to emerge from a slightly bashed-up old car, indicating a decent tolerance of small setbacks. My worst nightmare is a thick-haired, bearded man getting out of a pristine Tesla in possession of a pamphlet on building regs in temporary holiday accommodation. This person actually materialised. He was called Graham and he worked in the health and safety industry and knew all the rules. With a yellow wax crayon he went round the property pointing out my many minor infringements. After he left and I was pulling Graham’s beard hair out of the plug hole, he was grassing me up to the Health and Safety Executive, Mendip District Council and, much more frighteningly, Airbnb.

The council and the HSE were easily dealt with — the property is in good nick anyway — and took no interest in Graham’s complaints, but Airbnb panicked at the thought of liability. It asked me to supply a certificate to prove my toilet was safe after Graham had condemned it on some basis or other. I said that no such certificate existed in the UK but it insisted I produce one. In the end I cooked one up in the pub with a bemused Somerset plumber.

The Airbnb employee is a terrifying figure who haunts the poor owner. Speaking on a whistling line with a slight delay from some distant land, they can delist us with a click of a mouse and suspend our livelihoods.

All of us hosts are in a horrible dysfunctional relationship where we soak up the abuse because the money’s too good

After every communication I receive this message: Thank you for your co-operation. . . For full transparency we want you to know that we’ve made a note of this on your account. I start to worry about their file on me. Have I done well? Will I be pushed up the list towards being a superhost, or sent in disgrace to page 11 of the search engine?

Ratings and reviews are critical. When the central heating has broken down on a bank holiday at 10pm Airbnb are nowhere to be seen, but if you get a review of less than five stars in any of their categories (cleanliness, accuracy, communications etc) you receive an immediate admonishment from HQ with words to the effect of: please think about how you could do better next time. Here are some tips. 

But none of us can leave. All of us hosts are in a horrible dysfunctional relationship where we soak up the abuse because the money’s too good. We feel terrible about ourselves but ease the pain with a glass of quite good wine, which we can now afford.

Other companies exist, like Booking.com and Sykes Cottages. But Brian has an unbreakable hold over us. He owns all our reviews, in many cases going back years. In this tight market it’s the reviews that bring in the business. Brian knows that. You can tell from his smile and that fisherman’s jersey and his folksy manner. I’d be smiling too if I had Airbnb’s global revenues. A business that started with a laptop and an empty spare room now has a market capitalisation of 92bn bucks. That would probably make Brian’s tail wag, let alone Sophie Supernova’s.

As I have guests arriving tonight I now have to go and chase woodlice around a shower tray, so a dog in San Francisco can have caviar spooned into its bowl.

Guy Kennaway writes novels and memoir. His latest comedy is “Good Scammer” (Mensch Publishing)

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