When an Airbnb Guest
Will Not Leave.

The first hours set the tone. Confirm the agreed checkout in writing through Airbnb messaging, politely and without threats, so the agreed end date is on the record. Contact Airbnb support to report the overstay. Keep every exchange on the platform rather than by phone, because the written trail is what you will rely on later.

What not to do matters just as much. Do not change the locks, remove belongings, shut off utilities, or enter to force the issue. These self-help measures are illegal in many places and can flip the situation so that you, the host, are the party in the wrong. Stay on the documented, lawful path.

The reason overstays are frightening is the tenancy threshold. In many jurisdictions, once an occupant has stayed long enough, often around 30 days, they may acquire tenancy rights. At that point you cannot simply end a booking. You may have to pursue a formal eviction, which is slow, expensive, and entirely different from a checkout dispute.

This is why the risk is concentrated in long stays. A three-night guest who lingers is a manageable problem. A booking that runs near or past the tenancy threshold in your area is a categorically different exposure, and it is the one to design around.

Two records matter in an overstay. The first is the agreed checkout, captured in the booking terms and the platform messages. The second is the property condition, captured at the start of the stay. Together they establish when the stay was supposed to end and the state of the home, which supports both the overstay case and any damage that follows.

If the situation escalates to a formal process, contemporaneous records carry far more weight than recollection. A timestamped inspection at check-in, plus the documented booking terms, gives you a factual spine that an Airbnb agent or a court can follow.

Overstays rarely leave the property untouched. Once you regain access, document the condition immediately and pursue any damage through the normal process, comparing it to your check-in baseline. A difficult guest who overstayed is also the guest most likely to have caused damage and to dispute it, so the before-and-after is doubly important.

Be ready for a retaliatory review as well. A clean documentation trail supports any request to Airbnb to address a review that violates policy. See bad review after a damage claim for how to handle that fallout.

Map your exposure to long stays and difficult guests with the risk calculator.