Guests Gone Wild: The Cottage Country Edition — but instead of drunken antics, cottagers are high on rage.

A recent Guardian article exposed the result of lockdown-weary Britons unleashed into the countryside for holiday: bad behaviour, unreasonable demands, and traumatized service staff quitting their jobs. Adding insult to injury, these visitors left terrible reviews in their wake.

The article was emailed to Maryrose Coleman, co-founder and vice president of Muskoka District Rentals, by her daughter living in London. It immediately rang true — Coleman’s been living this new reality for two years now. The company manages luxury cottage rentals, a mostly upscale market but with some family-friendly options as well.

“It’s challenging because we were dealing with a lot of people who were renting that would ordinarily travel and couldn’t,” Coleman says. “And they weren’t used to cottaging. And so there was a different expectation. You know, they didn’t understand that at nine o’clock at night on a Saturday, it might be difficult for us to run something out to them. We tried to accommodate as best we can, but you know, it’s not a hotel.”

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