25/10/2026
A difficult decision… We’re leaving Airbnb 💔
After much thought, we’ve made the decision to leave Airbnb, and I wanted to explain why.
First of all, we want to say a huge thank you to the many wonderful guests who have stayed at The Hoot and The Potting Shed. ❤️ The vast majority of you are absolutely lovely, respectful people who leave our cabins clean and tidy, wash your dishes and even strip the beds without ever being asked. We appreciate you more than you know!
We’ve always chosen not to charge a cleaning fee, because we want to keep the cost of a stay as affordable as possible for our guests. This works because most people treat our cabins with the same care and respect they would their own homes.
However, Airbnb is now telling guests that they don’t need to do things like wash their dirty dishes or pick up after their dogs. For small, independent hosts like us, this has real consequences. It means asking our cleaners to do more work, increasing our costs and potentially having to increase our prices. It simply isn’t fair to expect our cleaners to pick up the extra work without considering the impact.
But sadly, this isn’t the only reason we’ve reached this decision.
We recently asked Airbnb for support in removing what we believe was an unfair review. Unfortunately, they have failed to support us. As a result, we stand to lose our five-star Superhost status and our place among the top 1% of places to stay.
After all the hard work, care and attention we put into providing a special place for people to stay, this is incredibly disappointing. We feel that Airbnb no longer provides the level of support that hosts deserve.
For us, running The Hoot and The Potting Shed has never just been about making money. It’s a passion. We love creating beautiful, welcoming spaces, meeting the lovely people who come to stay with us and knowing that we’ve helped make someone’s break special including many marriage proposals.
But Airbnb is taking away the joy of something we love doing.
Being a small, independent host takes an enormous amount of hard work, time and personal investment. We do it because we care, and because we want people to have a wonderful experience.
We want to continue doing that on our own terms, with a booking system that works for us and our guests, rather than one that makes our job harder and leaves us feeling unsupported.
So, while we’re sad that our journey with Airbnb is coming to an end, we’re also looking forward to a new chapter for The Hoot and The Potting Shed. 🌿
To all our lovely past and future guests, thank you for supporting our little business. We hope you’ll continue to follow us and book directly with us in the future. ❤️ keep following to see where we go next.
Here’s to keeping the joy in what we do! 🥂
