In summary, don't.
Would I have responded last year? Yes. Did it ever do any good? No.
As a people pleaser, it crushes my soul to have people think poorly of me. I work hard to create wonderful experiences, and my integrity is essential to my character. Being attacked for untrue statements brings every bit of chaos into motion, and I fight right back. It drives my husband crazy, because he’s learned that some people just don’t care. Learning that lesson of letting go, and not responding, has been the most difficult but the also the most freeing.
This Specific Message
As an Airbnb host, you need to respond to messages when they need your action — if there’s something you can change to make their stay better. Other previous issues have been resolved with refunds on their stay, discounts for future stays, reimbursing for missing items like shampoo that didn’t get refilled, etc.
Here, under the hostile environment the guest created with their personal message, nothing needed to be fixed. I also wasn’t interested in hosting them again, so I didn’t need to say anything back. We simply ended our business arrangement there.
If You Feel Unsafe
Absolutely, if you feel a guest is being aggressive where they might act against you, contact authorities and Airbnb. We have security cameras and alarms LINK on our home, since we do live on the same property as our rental unit. We also have a LINK number pad on the front door of the AirBNB unit, and we change that access code between guests.
For this specific guest after their message, I made sure the code was changed, the windows were locked, and reported them to Airbnb for their hostile message. When submitting our review after their stay, I was mentioned a
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