Damage, deposits and what your policy actually covers

Two questions decide whether a bad night costs you an evening or a season: is the house insured for paying guests, and can you prove what it looked like before they arrived?

A household policy written for a family living in a house is not a policy written for strangers paying to sleep in it. Before the first booking, disclose the use to your insurer in writing and ask for the answer in writing too. Distance makes this more important rather than less, because you will not be the person standing in the room when something goes wrong.

Put these questions to your insurer

• Is short-stay paying-guest use disclosed and accepted, and does it change the premium or the conditions?
• What is covered for fire, water, storm and theft — and is malicious damage by an occupant included or excluded?
• Is there liability cover if a guest is injured: stairs, a balcony, a pool, a geyser?
• Is the contents figure current, or a number from the year you first furnished the house?
• Does a claim require a police report within a fixed time, and who may file one on your behalf?

Platform protection is not insurance

What booking platforms advertise is a conditional programme with its own deadlines and exclusions, and it sits on top of the guest’s own liability rather than in place of your policy. Read the deadline first: most schemes expect a claim to be opened before the next guest checks in, which is impossible if you learn of the damage a week later, in another time zone.

Evidence beats argument

• Keep a dated inventory with photographs of every room, refreshed whenever you re-furnish.
• Have the housekeeper photograph the property at each turnover; a file that starts after the damage proves nothing.
• Confirm each guest’s identity against the booking at check-in.
• Write the damage rule into the house rules, in the amount and the currency you would actually claim.

Deposits and small losses

A deposit deters; it rarely compensates. Decide in advance which losses you simply absorb — a broken glass, a stained sheet, a lost key — and which ones justify a claim, then give your manager a standing limit to settle the first category without asking you. Chasing forty euros across a time zone costs considerably more than forty euros.

Water, weather and the empty weeks

Most large claims on Indian properties begin with water: a burst inlet hose, a blocked terrace drain, a monsoon roof. An empty house is where those become expensive, because nobody notices for days. Service taps and drains before the wet season, shut the mains supply when nothing is booked, and pay somebody to look inside every week whether or not there are guests.

What we do about it

We hold the dated inventory, photograph turnovers, report damage on the day it is found with the evidence attached, and settle small losses inside a limit you set — so the decisions that reach you are the ones that deserve your attention.