Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz.
The internet has been buzzing about Airbnb's latest policy change over restrictions on what a host can — and cannot — ask a guest to do before they check out.
I've been renting my home in the Hudson Valley for five years, and have been a Superhost since 2023. Currently, I have 90 guest reviews with an average rating of 4.97. That's not an accident. It's something I work hard at.
Though the property management company I work with hasn't always loved it, I've never been big on requiring guests to follow a strict cleanup policy. While we did ask for dishes to be done at one time, that hasn't been part of my guest instructions since 2025. For me, the most important tasks are to turn off the lights and return the key to the lockbox before guests leave. Beyond that, I don't expect much else, though I know that hasn't been the norm for some Airbnb users.
Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz.
Somehow, the B&B part of the nomenclature appears to have gotten lost. I've seen users who fear bad reviews if a place isn't meticulously cleaned, voicing their concerns on Reddit and Facebook. For me, that's not something I think someone should have to worry about when they're paying to use a space.
While there are legitimate stories of guests destroying a place or leaving it in shambles, this hasn't been my experience. I believe the majority are good guests.
There is still a cleanliness rating for hosts to fill out about guests, so I imagine that even without imposed rules, most will do the dishes anyway. Leaving a bag of trash inside the house shouldn't result in a host docking a star or two from their review. It should be part of the stay, especially since hosts can set a cleaning fee for their property upfront.
I am glad the company has intervened on behalf of the guests. They are staying at a vacation rental, not a work exchange.
I understand the rationale behind hosts who have lots of rules. There is often a small window between turnovers, and hosts want to make sure they have enough time to wash and dry everything before the next guests arrive.
It's something I worry about, too. That's why I keep extra linens and dishes on hand. They're there to use just in case there isn't enough time to complete everything between the bookings.
At one point, my property manager and I disagreed over what we wanted guests to do. I felt as if he was taking it personally if someone left dirty dishes in the sink or didn't sweep up. With this rule change, we'll no longer be at odds, and I'm glad.
Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz.
I am fortunate. I have rarely had a guest be anything less than tidy, and I have also had hardworking cleaners who have taken linens home to wash because turnovers have been so tight.
None of my guests have complained about my rules directly to me or in the comments they've left online about my property. I intend to keep it that way.
Everyone has their own reasons for getting into this business. For some, it is purely fiscal, but for me, it has been personal. This is my house, and I take tremendous pride in it and the surrounding area. I vet each potential guest personally and hand-pick a welcome gift for them. I want them to have a lovely stay, leave with fond memories, and maybe even a desire to return one day.
The last thing I want a guest to do is worry about a lengthy checklist of tasks before leaving. I don't want that to be their last memory of their stay.
Soon, a mother and daughter will be staying at my property for the third year in a row. In my emails to them, I wished them a safe journey and said we would take care of the rest — and I meant it.
QP Savills, which has sold property in the Golden Triangle for nearly 30 years, is the exclusive agent, with a dedicated showroom in its Vale do Lobo office. New-build opportunities
The post Works begin at Atlantic Pines, a new collection of 28 villas in Vale do Lobo appeared first on Portugal Resident.
One of Belgium’s top chocolatiers is celebrating a “triple whammy.”
Centho, a family business based in Flanders, has taken the wraps off three brand new additions to its renowned range of homemade praline chocolates.
One aim is to target the … Read more
The Portuguese Chamber of Commerce in the UK will return to Edinburgh on Thursday, November 12, 2026, with its Moving to Portugal Show and Seminars, bringing together property, legal, tax
The post Moving to Portugal Show heads to Edinburgh in November appeared first on Portugal Resident.
Natendrea Jones
When TikTok food reviewer Gabriel Rivera DMed Natendrea Jones about her seafood this spring, she assumed it was a prank.
"I thought somebody was playing a joke," Jones, 36, told Business Insider.
The South Carolina native had spent years trying to turn her cooking into a full-time business. She grew up surrounded by home cooking and began earning money young, first by preparing salads for neighbors and family cookouts, then by doing hair and nails.
Cooking remained a side hustle for more than a decade. Jones made seafood platters for friends and occasionally sold pans, but hair and nails paid the bills.
Jones had been posting her food on Facebook Marketplace for years. The platform didn't strike her as unusual: As a hairstylist and nail technician, she'd previously used Craigslist to find clients.
"I would always post on Facebook Marketplace because that was like my Craigslist," she said. "I was a Craigslist girl."
Meanwhile, Rivera had built a following of more than 2 million on TikTok by ordering food through Facebook Marketplace and reviewing it from his car. When he found Jones' listing, he offered her $200 to make him anything she wanted.
Jones prepared a pan overflowing with snow crab legs, lobster, shrimp, oysters, and fixings. It was not yet a menu item, she said, but it would soon become known as the "Gabriel Special."
When Rivera posted his glowing review in May — "her seasoning is on another level," he said between bites — Jones woke up to a flood of orders.
"I checked my Square. I had literally over 300 orders," she said. "I dropped my phone. I dropped to my knees."
Jones said she generated $50,000 in sales over the following two weeks and later surpassed six figures in sales. She used some of the money to buy supplies, such as new pots and pans.
The sudden growth was exciting, but it was also difficult to manage. Jones enlisted help from family members early on, refunded some orders, and said some customers waited as long as a month for their food.
"There's no way I can do 100 orders in a day," she said. "This type of motion is new to me."
Courtesy of Natendrea Jones
The pace eventually caught up with her. About three weeks after the review went live, Jones said she had to pause orders for a day to reset and catch up on sleep.
"The adrenaline was there, but I crashed," she said.
Since then, Jones has built more structure into the business. Customers order through her website, which adjusts pickup dates based on demand. She uses preorders to determine how much inventory she needs and now schedules pickup windows. On busy days, she said, her home-kitchen operation can handle 50 to 60 orders.
She still gets inquiries through Facebook Marketplace, but said most sales now come through Instagram and TikTok, where she has built sizable followings.
Jones' best-selling platters are not cheap to produce. She buys seafood in bulk, along with fresh corn, potatoes, garlic, butter, edible flowers, packaging, and other ingredients. She estimates that she spends roughly $20,000 a month on supplies, though costs fluctuate based on order volume and seafood prices.
"People just say, 'More money, more problems,'" she said. "Sometimes I'll have moments where I don't see money at all — the money is gone, but it comes right back because that's a business."
Natendrea Jones
Her signature sauce is central to the business, she said. Jones spent nearly eight years refining it and is protective of the recipe.
"My sauce is everything — because anybody can make a seafood boil, but how is your sauce?" she said. "I make my sauce from scratch and love and magic."
Natendrea Jones
The business is named Red's Garlic Seafood after her late father, who was known as "Big Red." He was a chef who had hoped to open a family restaurant, Jones said.
Her next goal is a food truck, though she's taking her time to secure the vehicle, permits, and licenses needed to operate it.
"I want to do everything the smart way," she said.
Eventually, she hopes to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. For now, she said she focuses on making each platter with the same care she brought to Rivera's order — the one that changed her business overnight.
"I make sure every pan has the flavors that it needs," she said. "I put the love and effort into the pan."
WEF
GoDaddy's CEO said small businesses should use AI to automate work, but not lose sight of their brand.
As head of the domain registrar and web-hosting company, Aman Bhutani has a bird's-eye view into what works for small businesses. The company said it has over 20 million customers, the majority of which are micro businesses, or those with fewer than 10 employees.
The entrepreneurs behind these companies consistently have passion and expertise, he said. However, they tend to have less technological capability — and even less bandwidth to do time-consuming tasks like creating and maintaining a website, said Bhutani.
"There is not enough time in the day," Bhutani told Business Insider.
Today, business owners can use AI agents to do that type of work with minimal friction, Bhutani said, and they can use the tools to help run parts of their business.
A recent survey from GoDaddy's small business research lab found that US entrepreneurs find content creation, marketing, and business advice as the top three areas where they see the most significant time savings with AI.
GoDaddy offers access to Airo, an agentic tool that builds websites and helps with other operational features. For instance, Bhutani said that Airo can create user logins for a small business's customers to make website profiles, or send targeted customer outreach based on a user's location or involvement with the business.
He said that businesses should stick to using agents for tasks that they're not as skilled at, or those that don't differentiate them competitively.
Bhutani said humans should control how their product is unique and not delegate control over their customers' experience. While AI can help with research — the owner ultimately needs to leverage their own knowledge when making decisions about what would work for the brand.
"It doesn't mean that AI cannot suggest those things," Bhutani said. "It can suggest, but the human should continue to control their branding."
While AI tools can save time, "ultimately, you want the human to focus on their area of expertise," Bhutani said, adding that the technology should "enable everything else."
World’s second largest brewer says use of drugs such as Wegovy can reduce desire to drink alcohol
• Business live – latest updates
Heineken has warned British bars and pubs that the boom in popularity of weight-loss drugs could lead to a fall in sales of beer and cider.
The world’s second-largest brewer sent a presentation to British hospitality customers earlier this month that said the use of GLP-1 medication – such as Ozempic and Wegovy – could reduce the desire to drink alcohol. This in turn could result in “fullness and fewer serves” of pints in pubs and bars, it added.
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© Photograph: william87/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: william87/Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Photograph: william87/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Courtesy of Tiffany Tang
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tiffany Tang, the 30-year-old founder of DrinkFolks. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I'm the founder and CEO of DrinkFolks, which brings jamu, a 1,300-year-old Indonesian herbal remedy, to the US as a prebiotic root tonic.
For the first two years of my career, I was an assistant director at a gallery owned by the first female fine arts dealer in America. From 2017 to 2021, I worked at Christie's International Real Estate in marketing and communications roles.
For the next year, I was a senior communications manager at CSM Sport & Entertainment before taking on a similar role at a fintech company that helped millions of Americans sustainably build their credit scores through rewards.
I was grateful to work there. We were doing big things, and I really learned what it was like to be at a mission-driven company.
The most interesting thing about my layoff was how incredibly calm I felt upon hearing the news. Our CMO told me first, and she was a friend, my college professor, and an executive I admire and respect.
When she told me, I said I didn't blame her, and this was a time for a reset. Turns out, the layoff was the best thing that could've ever happened to me.
For a long time, my self-worth was my net worth — my title, my salary, my career trajectory. When the layoff hit, I lost my sense of self. Reflecting afterward, all I could think was: who am I without the high-paying job?
A few weeks earlier, I had watched the movie "Eat, Pray, Love." When the layoff came, something in me said that this was my moment. I opened Kayak, found a one-way ticket to Bali for around $1,000, and booked it. Bali felt approachable and warm.
I originally planned to travel in Southeast Asia for a month but ended up staying from June 2023 through August 2024.
My awakening happened on day three. One of the first things I did in Bali was a Panchakarma, a full-body Ayurvedic detox at a retreat in Ubud. There was an optional silent day; one of the first times in my life I rooted and looked inward.
Sitting with my journal, I knew I had to stay. I was still negotiating my severance, so I did the math: my savings, my investments, what each month would cost. When my severance came through a few weeks later, it jump-started the journey.
Everyone I met understood me on an indescribable level. It was the only time in my life I was speaking Cantonese to people outside my family, reconnecting with my heritage. By the time I came home for the holidays, I had decided: I was moving to Asia.
The spark for the company was the women I met. Across Indonesia and Southeast Asia, I sat with women quietly building something of their own. I wanted to help these women build generational wealth for their families. I built DrinkFolks as a way to sustainably invest in them — 3% of every sale goes to women-led farms and nonprofits across Southeast Asia through our FolksFund — while supporting health stateside by bringing ancient wisdom into people's homes.
I started the company in January 2024, took every jamu class I could find in Bali, visited the source of jamu in Yogyakarta, and reformulated recipes in my Hong Kong kitchen.
By October 2024, I was back in the US, working with California food scientists to scale up my home-tested recipe. We launched in NYC in October 2025. Today, we're in 70+ stores across the US.
My salary before the layoff was $160,000 a year, plus equity. When I set off, I had roughly $14,000 between savings and severance — my spreadsheet calculated 4.6 months of runway — and I felt comfortable investing that in myself.
I budgeted like it was my job. I tracked my actual spending obsessively for the first four and a half months and came in at roughly $7,700 total.
All-in, I averaged about $1,300 to $2,300 a month, including flights, lodging, food, everything. My money stretched furthest in Cambodia and least in Hong Kong, which was financially similar to New York City. For comparison: my overhead, including my mortgage, maintenance, electricity, and WiFi in New York today is about $2,500 a month.
Healthcare was the biggest surprise, in the best way. I got into a motorcycle accident on the Pakse Loop in Laos, and seven stitches cost me around seven dollars, including painkillers and a week of antibiotics.
Cambodia was the best value. It's the most adventurous, outdoorsy country I visited, and I didn't want to explore alone, so I stayed in hostels for as little as $6 a night — partly a budget move, mostly a way to meet people. It's also where I met my first fellow Americans of the entire trip.
Hong Kong was the opposite — groceries and eating out gave me real sticker shock. I softened it with a genuine energy exchange: I moved in with a college friend and threw dinner parties several times a week, cooking meals for them in exchange for a place to stay. It was worth every dollar — I met some of my truest friends and future business partners there.
Courtesy of Tiffany Tang
It gave me the confidence to build DrinkFolks, a better sense of my heritage, and a version of myself I'm proud of. I've learned to never say never, but right now, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
My advice is to use your layoff as your launchpad. Things happen for you, not in spite of you. If you have even the slightest chance to live in that moment for yourself — for me, that was travel — take it as a gift and a blessing, not a crisis to survive.
Treat budgeting as freedom, not constraint. My money stretched so much further than I imagined. Clear parameters gave me the space to figure out who I am outside my job.
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