A traveler, Lianna Bartle, was shocked when her Airbnb host called her ‘fatso’ in a WhatsApp message. It all began when Bartle and her 8-year-old daughter set off for a vacation to celebrate her 35th birthday. Bartle, a British traveler, chose to book a room in the village of Endon, Staffordshire in the UK. Host Matthew Tolley listed it as a ‘Luxury Endon House Share’, but Bartle’s experience was far off from this description…
Bartle said it was ‘anything but luxury’. According to reports from the Bradford mum, upon arriving, the host showed them around the property. There were no real alarm bells until Tolley asked if they wanted to see the pet rats. Tolley then walked them to a utility room aside the kitchen to present the rats in a cage.
Bartley told Metro that “I was watching mortified. He should have disclosed there were rats in the house in his listing. Even though they were hidden away, they were still in the house. The smell throughout the house was awful. I don’t know how many there were but there were a few, maybe three or four. They smelt really bad, like rats wee and poo.”
One pet rat also bit Bartle’s eight-year-old daughter on her finger, further causing discomfort about staying in the property.
According to Yorkshire Live, Tolley admitted to sending the WhatsApp message which had an abusive tone, reading “f*** off fatso”. In the same message the host accused the mother of being “rude and wrong”.
The host, who lists his property on Airbnb, Booking.com and A-Hotel, also claimed that Bartle “doesn’t cook and lives on junk food and crisps.” Currently he has a rating of 4.81 on Airbnb with 59 reviews. Bartle booked the property through booking.com.
Bartle left a review, which has since been taken down, revealing all the health concerns listed above. Some comments from the review read: “The photos on here are deceiving (sorry) the rest of the house wasn’t as clean as I expected and definitely not up to my standards of clean! Not luxury! The fact that there wasn’t a lock on my room door was off-putting!”
She also wrote that the view from the room was “stunning” and the bedroom was “immaculate”, despite the negative aspects of her stay.