I LIVE LIKE THIS…
The Airbnb room renter
For the past two years, Francesca Clarke, who lives with her partner Richard and eight-year-old daughter Clarice, has opened up her London home to Airbnb. She talks about the rewards and challenges of having guests to stay
We took the plunge and let out a room when our circumstances were altered. A couple of years ago, our earnings went down because my partner Richard had a change of career. We thought: what are we going to do, how can we still afford our family holidays? My brother had rented a room out through Airbnb and it had worked well for him, and we had a spare room – it was supposed to be my home office but I was increasingly using the kitchen table to work from – so it wasn’t a hardship.
Make it easy on yourself where you can. We have a cleaner who comes every two weeks and we try to schedule our calendar for guests for after she’s been. When they arrive, the house is fresh and clean and the bed is made up. I also put out chocolates and a little vase of flowers picked from our garden. Little touches make a difference when you’ve been travelling – and it helps with good reviews, too!
Our guests share the bathroom and the kitchen. Most people who come to us are here for the weekend, so they are out most of the day doing touristy things. We tell guests to help themselves to tea and coffee, put their ready-meals in the fridge and feel at home in the kitchen. And in summer they can have breakfast outside in the garden – I’m very keen on my plants! Sharing the bathroom can be a bit of a problem occasionally, but if we need to be somewhere at a certain time, we say: ‘Would you mind if we have the bathroom at such and such o’clock?’
Buy easy-care sheets! I bought new bedding for the room in the January sales, but I have come to regret it. It is lovely Egyptian cotton and really should be ironed. In the early days, I did do that, but now I just give it a good old shake before I hang it out!
Be honest. You need to be truthful about the space – we say: ‘It’s a family home. Some of our possessions are in the room but they are out of the way [we have a lockable cabinet to store anything valuable], and please bear in mind our daughter is asleep after eight o’clock.’
It can broaden your horizons. The whole experience has been really good for Clarice. She has got to know people from South Africa, Russia, Ukraine, Italy, all over; she chats to the guests at breakfast and shows them her homework! We always approve people before they book and only take guests who have good reviews – and we’re always there when Clarice is around so it has never been a concern.
Everyone has been nice apart from… We did have a couple who had a huge row and we had to go in and say: ‘Please don’t do this here, sort out your marital problems elsewhere.’ I have become stricter now, so if people are noisy I will say: ‘Excuse me, this is a family home.’
They have their holiday and we have ours. Guests pay Airbnb so there’s never any wrangling over money, and you get paid when they arrive. Payments go straight into our holiday fund, which suits us perfectly! For more information, go to airbnb.co.uk