I've been a travel writer for decades and have seen Airbnb rules get wildly out of hand - and hosts act like dictators. At last, there's a crackdown. About time, too!

Staying in an Airbnb on the Isle of Skye recently, the host's list of rules read like proclamations issued by the Supreme Leader of North Korea.

Guests must recycle paper and metal separately, using tiny drawers attached to a specially designed kitchen bin. The drawers were so small they needed emptying daily into further bins outside. 

Glass, however, 'needed to be taken' to a recycling point at a nearby Co-op supermarket.

No candles were allowed. No fat could be washed down the sink. Only toilet paper could be flushed down the loo as 'inconvenient and expensive' septic tank issues had occurred previously. The word 'expensive' sounding like a warning.

No vapes or cigarettes (fair enough). You must turn a switch on the thermostat 15 minutes before taking a shower or else no hot water.

Meanwhile, all dishes had to be washed, dried and put away. Beds had to be stripped before departure, with linen placed in laundry baskets.

Phew! And there were more rules, printed on laminated sheets in a folder the size of an old Yellow Pages, alongside hefty instruction manuals. 

As might be imagined, it came as a great relief to hear this week that Airbnb has changed its rules to limit what hosts may ask guests to do.

It's about time, too. Airbnb may be an excellent way of staying in a wide variety of interesting forms of accommodation across the globe. But its hosts, frankly, had been getting terribly bossy of late – and cheeky, too.

The new rules, thank goodness, state that for bookings made from November 20, hosts should not ask guests to undertake tasks that take ‘significant effort or time’ and would normally be expected of a cleaner. 

These included washing up, stripping beds and taking rubbish to bins.

Yet all this should never have been required in the first place. Most Airbnb properties charge cleaning fees – inexplicably not simply woven into basic rates – so for many years guests had, in effect, been pressured into performing duties for which they had already paid.

The 'punishment' if you did not do the washing up and so on? Hosts could give you a poor 'guest rating'. Too many of these and you might be blocked from booking future properties.

The system had never felt right. Only after years of complaints did Airbnb – finally – listen to its ‘community’ and admit that many house rules could be ‘confusing, onerous and hard to manage’. 

But back to the Isle of Skye.

We could not initially get the central heating to work. To do so required contacting the host three times for assistance.

The electric hob would not work either. We messaged the host again. The hob (but of course!) would only operate when a pan was placed on it – I had been trying without one. The television was so tricky and took an hour of fiddling to link with iPlayer and ITV's app.

Plenty of instructions in that laminated folder. But plenty of niggles, too.

Did we have a good time on Skye? Absolutely, what a beautiful place – and the cottage, for all its Supreme Leader decrees, was great value, charming, warm and cosy on a weekend of gales (once we got the heating going).

Airbnb’s announcement is excellent news for guests. And about time, too.