An Airbnb owner shared a video of herself doing a walkthrough of a property after guests checked out, as she discovered something wasn’t quite right.

Laura Jimenez, from Washington, told Newsweek: “I knew something was off because the property seemed untouched, which is very odd for what should have been a 3-person stay.”

The 49-year-old posted a video to her TikTok account, @airbnbgirllaura, with the text overlay “why the Airbnb guest book made me emotional”.

“Something about this checkout feels off,” she said in the clip. The kitchen was untouched, the fridge empty, and the living room spotless. Most of the towels remained perfectly rolled, and most of the bedrooms appear unused.

“It’s weird for a three-person stay,” Jimenez said, puzzled. A deeper inspection revealed only one bed slept in, and minimal signs of use throughout the house.

Then, just as she was heading out she discovered why when she read from the guestbook.

In the video, which has amassed more than 890,000 views since being shared last moth, she said: “The guest explained that her friends got sick and couldn’t attend their girls’ weekend. So she stayed by herself.”

“I felt very sad when I read the guest’s sweet note in the guestbook. Heartbreaking. But glad she enjoyed her stay anyway, ” Jimenez told Newsweek.

The emotional twist sparked a wave of responses in the comments. “Awh. How sad,” one viewer wrote. While another commenter said that the state of the home wasn’t that unusual at all: “I always leave Airbnb stays looking spotless.”

“I like to share the behind-the-scenes of being a host to inspire others to pursue this type of investing,” Jimenez explained, and said she was pleased by the response on TikTok.

“TikTok users have been great. They really feel the heartbreak. I wanted to safely—anonymously to the guest—share the story and TikTok users have been very open to it,” Jimenez said.

Airbnb is one of the most popular travel options worldwide, with the site reaching 11.1 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2024, while that same year Airbnb reported over 492 million booked nights and experiences, Statista said, quoting figures from Airbnb published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The unexpected Airbnb experience may have left Jimenez confused, but the unusual experience wasn’t negative, unlike in December last year when 41-year-old Vincent Villegas rented out his property and nightmare guests left him with more than $3,000 of property damage.

Villegas arrived at his property to discover that small furniture from around the house had been relocated to the garage, and some items were missing entirely. Many of the walls, doors, and mirrors appeared to have substances smeared across them, the thermostat was changed to 50 degrees, and the back door was left open.

Thankfully for the nightmare stories, there are good ones too. In 2024, one woman returned to her property after renting it out for a 21st birthday to find it was not only perfectly tidy, but the guests had gone above and beyond by color-coding her entire bookshelf.

“After they checked out, I was so happy to see how clean the house was,” the host told Newsweek. “And then I noticed the books. I thought to myself, ‘That had to have taken them a while to do!’ It was such a thoughtful and unexpected surprise.”

Newsweek reached out to Airbnb via email for comment.