It had been quite the grand European tour for Candace Low. In late June, with a six-week jaunt across the continent wrapping up in Portugal, the biologist and adjunct professor at San Francisco State University visited a remote area of a popular tourist region called the Algarve. The Algarve is full of hotels, but Low was in a coastal region called Aljezur. Much of the area is undeveloped — it’s a national park — so Low found a place to stay via Airbnb, which has hundreds of listings in the area, some for as little as $21 a night.
She’d already had one less-than-stellar stay in a home rented via Airbnb: In May, early on in her trip, she found a room in a flat in Stockholm, where Low ended up hiding while her host, Ida, engaged in verbal and physical abuse with her teenage daughter while her two other daughters cried and wailed. (Ida also tried to charge her an extra 95 euro for using the fridge.)
And her three-night stay in Aljezur’s Costa Vicentina — at a work-in-progress casa, with a 4-and-half-star rating — got off to a rough start. After arriving late on the first night, Low and her host, Samantha, never got along. “She did not like me from the moment I arrived and proceeded to make my stay uncomfortable,” Low later told Airbnb in an email. Relations were icy, if workable, but on the third night, June 22 — when Samantha organized a party for the other guests, a couple who are Airbnb hosts in Spain, and some volunteer workers at the property — things fell apart. Low says Samantha turned her nose up at the wine she’d brought. Then Samantha told Low — the biologist — that she didn’t believe in science. Then she started mocking Low for being from California.
Finally, after a few glasses of wine and a joint, and an argument over getting more money in order for Low to use her kitchen, Samantha asked Low to leave — offering her her money back if she did. It was 2 a.m….

A Far Rockaway houseboat belonging to a TV cooking show host and occasional underground lobster roll purveyor was sunk by unruly Airbnb guests over the weekend, according to online posts by the foodie, Ben Sargent. Sargent hosts the Cooking Channel’s Hook, Line & Dinner and rose to prominence in part through his goofy lobster-roll-vending alter ego Dr. Klaw, an Ali G-like drug dealer caricature with a knack for setting up photo shoots with New York publications and, by all accounts, making and vending tasty lobster rolls. The Department of Health didn’t approve of his unlicensed operation and shut him down in 2010. Until last weekend, Sargent was also renting out a houseboat named Ziggy Stardust at Far Rockaway’s Marina 59 on Jamaica Bay, once home to the bug-and-art-infused Boatel, a floating DIY hotel concocted by a group of artists to levels of fanfare on par with Dr. Klaw. Sargent is in the process of reviving the Dr. Klaw shtick via an elaborate Kickstarter campaign seeking $45,000 to stage a “live action treasure hunt” consisting of Sargent driving up and down the coast on a motorcycle decked out to look like a lobster, seeking to “track down” Dr. Klaw and stage invite-only seafood parties. Regarding Saturday night’s sinking of the Ziggy Stardust, Sargent wrote on his blog, “I’m very bummed to tell you that one of Dr. Klaw’s best hideaways is now sitting under 15’ of water due to a bad group of renters.”…

Visitors who abuse drugs. Guests who
lock dogs in bathrooms (with predictably awful results). Apartment owners who crawl into bed with renting couples. All of these nightmare scenarios have actually happened to Airbnb hosts and guests, and just scratch the surface of a recent thread on Reddit.
About 4,500 comments detail memorable experiences from those who host and those who rent….

As an unseasoned traveler, I just returned from Paris more exhausted than
when I left. No, I’m not a party animal or an unstoppable museum lover. I’m just an Airbnb newbie who had no idea how to decipher a listing. As a result, I was kept up to 3 AM every morning with my new friend Kesha blaring into my room….

Putting a new spin on treating a holiday rental just like home, guests have been pushing the boundaries in their behaviour. Users of a popular internet forum have spent the last 18 days revealing their worst experiences hosting and staying in private vacation accommodation. From guests using their home as a venue for orgies and weddings to hosts giving out wrong addresses and locking visitors in their room, no story was too extreme for this thread. Over 4,300 people responded to the Reddit question: ‘AirBnb hosts of Reddit. What is your most memorable experience with a tenant?’…

It’s on the house.
That’s what one Airbnb guest assumed when he apparently decided to take off with $1,525 in items from the Williamsburg home he was renting
earlier this month, including 13 duvet covers, 20 bath towels, and a giant world map, police said.
The 37-year-old man first noticed his home had been cleared out on July 7 after the 26-year-old guest had checked out. The man had been staying there since July 4,
police said..

Last summer, Montauk was terrorized by entitled “loud, obnoxious people” peeing all over bushes and fornicating right on the side of the highway. Little did enraged locals know, entitlement knows no bounds: this summer the horror has migrated west to Sag Harbor, where this past weekend, Manhattan hedge fund bro Brett Barna allegedly took it upon himself to trash a $20 million mansion with his annual, unfortunately-dubbed #Sprayathon party. There were 1,000 guests in attendance. There were “scores of bikini-clad women and costumed gun-toting midgets,” according to the NY Post. Ace Hood was there. And as a result, Barna’s been booted from both Airbnb and his job, so he’ll have to resort to more traditional rental-booking options when choosing a venue at which to spray away his sorrows. Sad!…

A furious Airbnb owner of a $20 million Hamptons mansion is planning to sue a hedge funder after he threw a giant party complete with champagne guns and thousands of revelers, Page Six reports. The owner claims Brett Barna, a portfolio manager at Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management, said he was holding a fundraiser for an animal charity with around 50 guests, according to Page Six’s Emily Smith. Instead, thousands of guests showed up for an event called the “Sprayathon” that was documented on social media. “The only animals there were the people, a thousand of them. They drowned themselves in Champagne … they broke into the house, trashed the furniture, art was stolen, we found used condoms,” the owner told Smith. “So many people were there that the concrete around the pool crumbled and fell into the water. It was like ‘Jersey Shore’ meets a frat party.”…

“Beautiful 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom condo next to Angel Stadium. Only 2.5 miles from Disneyland. Secured parking structure, pool, jacuzzi, gym and sauna. Plenty of restaurants within walking distance.”

That Anaheim listing on the travel lodging website Airbnb – offered by “Marc” – screamed perfect Southern California vacation rental.