Rental host ridiculed for displaying rules across ‘every room and every surface’

‘Someone was excited to use their new laminating machine’, was one response to viral video

A holiday home host has been called out over their extreme labelling displaying rules across the rental property, which a guest said took away the feeling of being on holiday.

In a video shared on TikTok that has been viewed almost three million times, Becky Levin Navarro asked whether “there a cap on how many rules can be displayed at Airbnbs” – though Airbnb told The Independent that the property was not booked through them.

She then proceeded to show the abundance of labels across the home, with various laminated notes stuck to doors, walls, tables and cupboards. Some read “antique and fragile” or “for owner’s use only”, while there are warnings on the microwave not “pull open or push closed”.

One states: “Decorative piece only. Do not touch or move for ANY REASON. I am 10,000 years old and will break if you look at me the wrong way.”

Ms Navarro said of the property, which she stayed at with another family: “The rules displayed all over the house just killed me. It seemed like every room and every surface had a note. It almost felt like it wasn’t a vacation with So. Many. Rules.”

It’s not clear where the property is, although it’s geotagged as Wimberley, a village in central Texas in the US.

The viral post has garnered more than 6,500 comments, with the majority ridiculing the level of labelling.

One TikTok user wrote that “someone was excited to use their new laminating machine”, while another asked: “Is this a museum?”.

The number of rules led one user to joke that “you just know they have cameras in there watching you”.

In April 2023, Kennedy Calwell shared her horror when she thought she had discovered a hidden camera in the Airbnb she was renting with a group of friends.

Earlier this year, The Independent reported how the behaviour of two guests left an Airbnb owner with a $1,570 (£1,260) bill. The couple in South Korea took revenge when they were unable to cancel their booking, leaving the gas on and the taps running for 25 days straight.

This article was amended on 21 August 2023 to include Airbnb’s position that the property was not booked through them.