🛑 My Airbnb Experience in Riyadh — A Cautionary Tale 🛑I booked a 10 day stay in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia through Airbnb, totalling £500, after confirming with the host that smoking was not allowed in the building. Unfortunately, what awaited us was a complete nightmare.As you can see in the pictures below, the property was infested with cockroaches, including one found crawling above the head of a 10 month old baby while she slept. We had to catch and remove several ourselves during the stay.Every night, the apartment filled with cigarette smoke seeping in from other units, despite the host’s assurance of a smoke free environment. To make matters worse, the water supply was cut off for over six hours on two separate occasions during our stay.We raised both the smoking and water issues repeatedly with the landlord through the Airbnb app, and there is documented evidence of all communications.After all this, Airbnb offered just 10 percent compensation for the affected nights, later making an exception with an offer of 200 US dollars (around £160) which was an insult considering the original £500 cost and the fact that we had to extend our stay in Riyadh for a full working week, missing several pre planned business meetings arranged from the UK.To make matters worse, we spent over one hour and fifty minutes on a call with an Airbnb supervisor named Anishah, providing detailed evidence and explanations of our experience, only to be met with the same inadequate response.💡 Moral of the story:Do not expect the same standard of service or accountability from Airbnb in Riyadh as you would in Europe.
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