Airbnb Checklist

A More Objective Rating Tool for Airbnb, Hotel Rooms, VRBO and Bed-and-Breakfasts

Background and explanatory details follow the checklist, but we want the ‘meat’ right up front, so here is the list.

As a One-Page Printable Checklist

Would any reasonable host be offended if you left this for them, or sent them a copy? You don’t have to check every item… you might simply put an X on those items that you wished were present.

As Detailed Text

Level 1: Sleep

You drop your bags and just need to get up the next morning and run.

• 1 Perfect access instructions
• 2 Comfortable bed
• 3 Extra blankets
• 4 Bearable air conditioner/heat noise
• 5 Bearable neighbor/street noise
  If the room is adjacent to a commuter train yard with, say, 11 tracks (!) — like our recent room — state it in text in the description and characterize the noise level. This room’s noise level was actually perfectly fine (for one of our party but not the other), so it’s not a showstopper, just a price tradeoff that can be well worth it. And if the trains didn’t switch tracks (that’s where the clickety-clack came from) they made almost no noise at all from several floors up.
• 6 Dark drapes
  … or darkness one way or the other.
• 7 Soap
• 8 Plentiful hot water
• 9 Wi-Fi password

Level 2: Comfort and Convenience

In this level, you’re staying for a few days. There’s a difference between two sublevels: whether it’s a bed-and-breakfast (in which there’s no expectation of eating in the room), or an Airbnb/hotel suite (where you expect to sometimes make your own food).

• TV instructions
• Stands for two suitcases
• Lamps on both sides of bed
• Power outlet for phone charging on both sides of bed
• Power outlet for phone charging on some countertop
• Space in bathroom for two toiletry sets
• Shelves in shower for soap, shampoo, razors
• Bathroom vent fan
• Bedroom and bathroom doors that close
• Bedroom and bathroom doors that are quiet
• Breakfast drinks (coffee, tea, etc.) customary to the region
• Ice available
• Outdoor furniture, for 4 if the outside space has room

Level 2 Items If In-Room Food Preparation Is Possible:

• Plates, cups, utensils for 4
• Pot, pan
• Spatula
• Ladle
• Toaster
• Dish towels
• Dish soap

Level 3: Deluxe

Mostly not our ideas, but things we’ve seen in great places.

• Easy chair/lounge chair
• Writing desk
• Pens
• Gourmet breakfast
  (No one gets unique credit for this one, but the best we had was at the Blind Tiger, formerly Willard Street Inn in Burlington, Vermont)
• Cookies or afternoon snack
• Late night snack
• Hot/cold drinks in the afternoon appropriate to the locale
• Guest book for comments in room or lobby
• Night light
• Local tourism literature
• Beautiful decor
• Shampoo
• Conditioner
• Ceiling fan
• Plush towels
• Robes
• Ironing board
• Iron
• Board games
• Frozen water bottles for the road (Percy Inn — Portland, Maine)
• Snack/fruit for the road (Percy Inn — Portland, Maine)
• White noise in lobby (Percy Inn — Portland, Maine)
• Great literature (Percy Inn — Portland, Maine)
• Public refreshments refrigerator (Hollerstown Hill Bed and Breakfast — Frederick, Maryland)
• Loaner umbrellas at door (Hollerstown Hill Bed and Breakfast — Frederick, Maryland)
• Pool Table (Hollerstown Hill Bed and Breakfast — Frederick, Maryland)
• Restaurant rating blackboard/whiteboard/bulletin board to share restaurant ratings (my idea)

Background and Explanations

I’ve stayed in enough travel lodgings to experience and enumerate the items that distinguish a good visit. The list is straightforward even if it does have dependencies and conditions… not all things apply to all situations. First of all, there are different circumstances for your stay: sometimes you just want to DROP YOUR BAGS (level 1), sleep, and wake up only a few hours later and run to catch your next train or whatever. On the other extreme is when you are hoping for the ultimate in PAMPERING (level 3) even if it’s not at a 5-star hotel or price.

In between are the BASICS (level 2)… a surprisingly long list of what a room must have to satisfy a multi-night stay where you only bring your clothes and not much else. Our checklist will spell out all 3 levels.

Running a Hotel Is Not Easy

Supplying the basics is surprisingly difficult. That’s why B&B operators probably work very hard. We don’t suggest that Airbnb operators will find this list easy, and we acknowledge how much attention to detail it takes. Most of the items fortunately have 100% ‘thingness’; that’s my way of saying that they merely need to be acquired and left in the room. Others are process-heavy… like the recent time we found that there was no remote control for a TV (and the TV’s manual buttons on the back did not provide critical functions). One would think that a TV remote is the ultimate in thingness… but if the hotelier doesn’t have a process to ensure it’s present… well, you get my point.

Anyway, we acknowledge how hard this is, but this checklist should make it easier, for both host and guest.

The Urgency of Written Instructions

Two examples occurred on a recent trip… and they motivated finally publishing this long-thought-about checklist:

Example One: Getting to the Airbnb (access instructions): What??? Yes, we’ve been to places that were hard to get to… or get one’s vehicle parked at. One host took a video of how to navigate one’s car to the parking garage spot. It was through 4 (technically you could say 7!) security checkpoints, and more. Sadly, even this great effort wasn’t really the best, although it was helpful, especially for non-native speakers. The perfect instructions would have been written steps with perhaps 6 short sentences. Sorry, but I was a technical writer for years… and that’s what this Airbnb needed. Our particular party had all the time in the world, but imagine arriving at this place after international air travel and having to watch a cloud-based-video at 2AM to park your car. Watching a video is tedious.

Example Two: TV instructions. Stop laughing, it’s not just about a geezer problem. We were in a room where, somehow, the TV remote disappeared (we looked in, under, and over everywhere including fold-out sofas, dishwasher, etc.). We only had the Apple TV (hardware device) remote. So now we needed to understand what subscriptions there were. We could cast plain Youtube, but casting YoutubeTV was not possible because it wouldn’t operate in the current country(!). Downloading an app-based remote failed at different weak points like finding the TV IP address… because the back-of-TV buttons didn’t support all functions. The ultimate failure wasn’t the disappearance of the remote, but the lack of instructions that would have 1) confirmed by implication that the remote should have been there, and 2) helped us with any paid subscriptions. This is more than a checklist item, it’s a theme: Airbnb need instructions for everything from the TV to trash.

Indexing

Airbnb checklist

Airbnb necessities

Hotel checklist

VRBO checklist

Airbnb room checklist

Motel room checklist

Hotel necessities checklist

Hotelroom checkist

Motelroom checklist

Bed and breakfast checklist

Bed & breakfast checklist

Bed-and-breakfast checklist