An Airbnb guest broke something. What now?

Something is broken and the guest has left. Before you do anything else, work out which of three situations you are actually in, because they have completely different answers.

Wear, breakage, or damage

Wear is the property ageing. Scuffed paint, a worn chair arm, a tap that drips harder than it did. No guest caused it in particular and no guest can be charged for it. This is the cost of running a rental and it belongs in your maintenance budget.

A small breakage is a glass, a mug, a bent pan, a stained towel, a cracked toilet seat. Someone did cause it, and it costs you real but small money.

Genuine damage is different in kind, not just degree. A broken bed frame, a burn in the worktop, a flooded bathroom, a smashed TV. Something that costs real money to fix or that stops you accepting the next booking.

Almost every bad outcome in this situation comes from treating one of these as another.

Small breakages are usually not worth pursuing

This is the part hosts resist and it is still true.

Chasing a guest for a broken glass costs you a message thread, a mildly hostile guest, and a meaningful chance of a review that mentions you charged them for a glass. Future guests read that review and take the guest's side, because from the outside it reads as pettiness even when you were right.

Build small breakages into your pricing instead. A few pounds a booking covers a startling amount of glassware over a year, and it costs you nothing emotionally.

The exception is a pattern. One broken glass is life. A group that leaves fifteen things damaged is telling you something, and that belongs in the review you write about them.

For real damage, document before anything else

If it is genuine damage, photograph it before you touch it, clean it, or message anyone.

Take more photos than feels necessary: wide shots that show the room, close shots that show the damage, and something that establishes the date. If you have photos of the same spot from a previous turnover, those are worth keeping too, because the most common way a claim fails is being unable to show the item was fine before.

Do this before the next guest arrives. Once someone else has stayed, you cannot demonstrate who caused it, and the claim is effectively dead regardless of how obvious it feels to you.

Message the guest before you open a claim

In most cases this resolves it, and it resolves it better.

Keep it short, factual, and free of accusation. Something like: "Hi, hope you got home fine. We found the [item] broken after checkout. No drama at all, these things happen, but it does need replacing at about [amount]. Are you happy to sort that through Airbnb?"

A surprising number of guests say yes immediately. They were often already aware, sometimes embarrassed, and frequently expecting to hear from you. What turns those people hostile is discovering a claim against them before anyone spoke to them.

If they decline or go quiet, then use the Resolution Centre. Check the current deadline as soon as you find the damage rather than assuming you have long, because it is shorter than most hosts expect.

Write the honest guest review

Whatever happens with the money, the review is the part that protects other hosts, and it is the part hosts most often skip because it feels confrontational.

You do not need to be harsh. "Group was friendly and communicative, but the flat needed more repair than a normal turnover" is factual, fair, and tells the next host exactly what they need to know. Leaving a glowing review for a guest who damaged your place is how the next host ends up in the same position.

Reduce the next one

Two things do most of the work. A short, specific set of house rules that includes a line telling guests accidents are expected and an honest heads-up is treated differently from silence, which gets you told about problems while they are still small. And a cleaning checklist that includes a damage check, so breakages are found in the turnover rather than by the next guest.

The second one matters more than it sounds. Damage discovered by your next guest is no longer a damage problem. It is a review problem.