We recently opened a two week sit and had a few really great applicants. We had to turn down one sitter who is currently travelling in our area. At the time I said that we would be happy to host in future if they came to our city.
This sitter has now asked if they can stay with us on a weekend when we are not planning on being away. We are very happy to host them as a guest in our spare room without any expectation of compensation (beyond perhaps feeding the cat on one day when we will be out late). We regularly rent this room out on Airbnb and have no problem sharing our space with guests. The sitter is aware that we will be home.
My question is: does anyone see a problem with doing this via trustedhousesitters? Would it make sense to set it up as an official sit, or could this lead to problems as we will still be at home? I know it can be hard to get sits when you are starting out on THS, so I’d like to give them a review and vouch for them if they seem reliable.
Setting this up as an official sit seems potentially problematic, since you would be breaking the term
“ 5.2.13. ensure your home is vacated for a Sitter throughout the duration of the Sit, and that no third parties will interfere with the Sitters enjoyment of your property;”
Beside what @Silversitters mentioned, you’d be doing other hosts a disservice if you review based on someone not actually doing a real sit, which is what reviews are for. Being a guest who helps out here and there is nowhere near the same as doing a real sit, with all of its responsibilities.
If you want to host them as a guest, rather than a sitter, I suggest just doing that.
As mentioned, you can not officially host a guest who happens to be an HS via the THS platform while you are also there, but you’re of course welcome to allow anyone you want to be a guest in your home in general, and that includes someone you’ve befriended on the platform.
We allow sitters to arrive early or stay later and have built friendships with sitters that now come to stay with us or will pitch in with pet care for longer overlaps, but any official TH sit date range does not start until the HS is allowed to occupy our space without us there (which could include allowed buffer periods of a day or two at start or end of the sit to enable orientation and coverage in case of travel incidents, but that’s the extent of our official sit overlap).
Was that what you meant when you offered - or did you mean that you’d welcome them to apply for future sits?
I would never ask a host (or anyone) I didn’t know or had met to come and stay at their place (unless perhaps an emergency that forced me) so just curious.
It wouldn’t be a THS-sit in my book, and «reviews» of such a visit would be kind of false in lack of a better word.
If you meant to host them without a sit when you offered, that is certainly nice of you.
My view is that it would need to be an entirely private arrangement between you. I also think it’s a little bit cheeky to ask to come and stay with you as your guest….
I agree. The request is very strange. And if this host normally rents out the unit as an Airbnb, they are potentially giving up income in letting the sitter stay there.
I would worry about setting a precedent with this particular person.
Sits for only 2-3 nights are a pain in the neck, but being allowed to stay in a stranger’s home for 2-3 nights without any big responsibilities—is a huge gift.
I don’t see it as a sit at all. They are guests. Or if this is a space you normally airbnb, then you are comping them a weekend which is awesomely generous but there is no “exchange” here except in the sense that we do favors for friends all the time and often get paid back in unexpected ways.
Thanks for the responses! We will host them privately, and as it has been pointed out a review is not appropriate in this situation.
I have to say I don’t find the request that strange. We did not select them for the original sit, but said we might be able to arrange a sit in future if our plans coincided. In the end, we are not going to be away when they hoped to visit our city, but we decided we would be happy to offer our spare room anyway. I grew up using platforms like couchsurfing and just think it’s nice to give something back occasionally.