Airbnb Answers: Guest information and flagging guest behavior

[Airbnb]

You asked: Can Airbnb share more information about guests, like their ratings, full name, etc.? Can we get the ability to flag bad guests and make this information visible to other hosts?

More guest information

We're taking a close look at what additional information we can share to help you feel confident about the quality of every guest, every time you host. Currently, before confirming a booking, you can see a potential guest’s prior reviews and profile information (including hometown, education background, hobbies, and languages spoken). But in order to protect the privacy of both hosts and guests, we don’t share last names until after a booking is confirmed. If you don’t feel comfortable accepting a reservation with this set of information, you may message guests with additional questions. We don’t share guests’ home addresses because that information is not relevant or required to make a booking.

Every guest is required to provide their full name, date of birth, phone number, email address, and payment information to Airbnb before being allowed to book a reservation. As a host, you also have the option to require guests to provide a government ID before booking your home, which is just one feature of our ongoing effort to build trust in the community.

Flagging guest behavior

In the coming months, we’ll be adding more ways for you to report guest behavior that we might need to address. Stay tuned for more, but know that host reviews of guests remain the most powerful flagging tool for the community.

More than ever before, we’re using your reviews to signal both excellent and not-so-great guest behavior. We’re developing a Superguest program that will help you identify experienced travelers with excellent ratings. And for the rare occasions things don’t go well, your reviews will help us identify poorly behaved guests, issue more specific and strict warnings, and remove those guests who do not improve their behavior.

Be assured that when guests get negative reviews from hosts, Airbnb follows up. We make sure guests receive warnings about unacceptable behavior, and in some cases they can be blocked from booking entirely. We take the safety of you and your guests very seriously, which is why we require everyone in our community to uphold our community standards. Your reviews of guests are essential to establishing trust in our community, and we’re dedicated to taking action on your behalf to help ensure high quality experiences every time you host.

In the latest Host Q&A, CEO and Head of Community Brian Chesky answered top-voted questions during a livestream event. For questions he didn’t have time to address, we’ve introduced Airbnb Answers. Want to ask more? We’ll invite hosts to ask their questions before the next quarterly Host Q&A. We’ll keep you posted in Airbnb Updates.

[An-Maré0]

I fully agree that guests confuse an Airbnb stay with a Hotel stay. They choose the location and accommodation and then rate you a 3 for location?? When guests are booking - they must have a tick list - e.g. this is not a hotel but a private ...house, villa ect.

Guest compare 5stars in a hotel to 5stars at an Airbnb. Maybe we should come up with a different name for the rating. - maybe - 'hosting compliments'

Then the guest can decide how many compliments they want to give us. 

[Rebecca181]

With all due respect, why do we read so many posts here from hosts whereby they have experienced 'bad guest' behavior (breaking house rules, wanting an undeserved, unwarranted refund, etc) and the 'badly behaving guest' is allowed to post what is an obviously retaliatory review (a 'revenge review', which violates Airbnb's Terms of Service) and, in many cases, Airbnb Customer Support / Case Management states to the host that the review must stand, even if the host loses their Super Host status because of it?

[Rebecca181]

@Jim328 At this point, after reading comments here as well as elsewhere, I can only think that Airbnb has conveniently 'forgotten' that many of it's hosts are sharing their personal HOMES. It seems that they think that we are actually commercial hotels, or property managed listings who's owners make enough money off of the listing to pay for the damages that may occur when a house is misused or 'trashed'. Under the guise of embracing all peoples (and animals - any animal, if the guest claims it is an 'emotional support' animal) and not being 'discriminatory', we are held hostage by policies that obviously favor the guest and harm the host. My guess is that the 'suits' driving the impending IPO eventually want only 'Plus' and 'Beyond' listings, and hotel and property managed listings, based on the new standards for hosting that take effect in July (4.8 for Super Hosts; 4.7 for hosts). It's nuts, really, for hosts to even try to meet these ridiculous standards anymore. Who would even want to try?

[Ann10]

Dawn, Dave and Ricky-Whenever a guest commits libel and defamation of character agaisnt me in a review, will ABB take it down even w proof? H@ll no? What I do next is tell the guest in the response that I hope they can find a cheap ABB place next to _________court house because libel ain't cheap, and each and everytime the liars review comes down like lighting. So, ABB will take down the review for the creepy liars but not for the loyal super host. This company has no morals in my opinion and experience.  In addition, ABB knows certain guests have committed crimes against me and they are still using the site. They even took down my review of one of them. They also took down my review of one that lied to get her way. They want to keep getting service fees.

[Ann10]

How much more can you flag by letting ABB know that someone tried to extort money from you or vandalized your apartment. ABB even told me not to cave w the extortionist yet both criminals are still using the site. The flag isn’t going to mean anything. 

ABB went against their own policy and colluded w a criminal in order to suspend me from the site. What a joke! 

[Samantha-and-Bruce0]

What is very frustrating is if you experience a terrible guest (we've had one in five years of hosting), that horrible guest will likely not leave a review, therefore, our review never posts and future hosts cannont know what to expect.  

[Todd5]

Twice now I have had guests who book months in advance, then cancel exactly one day prior to my medium cancellation policy. This makes it almost impossible to rebook, and leaves me in a very vulnerable position of having to lower my price. Also, as far as I can tell, there is nothing preventing the canceling guests from rebooking immediately at the lower price.

My request would be that any guest cancellations be noted on their profile so I may assess if a pattern exists with certain guests. This information would be very revealing about guest behavior.

[Jane-and-Tony0]

Disclosure of the names and relationships of all members of a party is pretty important.  We offer a 2 bedroom apartment.   All AirBnb is concerned with is that e.g. Jane Doe makes a reservation for 2 guests.  Does Jane Doe require one bedroom or two?  It's slightly embarrassing to me to have to ask the guest later in the booking process.  Yes we need more information about who is coming!!

[Victoria567]

Hi@Jane&Tony

What would really help other hosts, is the halt of the vague review of poor guests, from fellow hosts.

No facts, just the bland ‘ best suited to a hotel’...Er Hello?

Fellow host......I’ve just had the guest I would NOT want to host again and they got a 5* star, review so WHAT THE HECK, is going on?

Other host.......Oh it couldn’t be that bad, just chalk it down to experience as it WILL make YOU a better host. I suggest that you don’t cane this guest, just write “best suited to a hotel” as EVERYONE surely knows, what this guest did in your family home.

Fellow host.......but that’s so vague, how’s that going to STOP this guest bouncing around air bnb from unsuspecting host to host?

Other host.........it’s ONLY a review, for goodness sake! It soon gets buried anyway, but most  important of all, I DONT want to risk my STATS!

Er....Hello?

[Ping-And-Daryl0]

Whoever thought 5 stars should be the benchmark for each category clearly has little understanding of human behaviour.  I suggest those responsible should subject themselves to the same scrutiny using the same principles. In other words they have "failed" to achieve a perfect score and should be immediately penalised. 3 stars overall score for their failed rating system. Note, how many bugs are on their platform and you cannot even reply to a comment here without a "failure". The review system design is a total crock.

[Wende2]

Hello all......I'm new to Airbnb, just started the first of Aug.  I've had only 1 bad experience, 2 men, horrible, they didn't use plates to eat off of an left crumbles everywhere, 1 had stomach issues that would have been nice had he flushed twice, so disgusting.  I didn't leave a review as I figured he wasn't planning to, why leave a review and have a host leave the truth when they know both go public at that point, rotten guest can just keep moving on since the host will have no clue what they're in for.  Because of them I wondering why Airbnb can't have a private review link, it would be nice if hosts could leave reviews to be clicked to at the profile pg, another thing I noticed just started when you get an email saying so an so left you a review, you don't see it right away now, once you've left a review you get to see what they had to say, why would they think that was a good idea.?!  I see people mentioned the guest profile picture not being one of a person, my host picture is my dear sweet cat Gus (no longer with us), that made me wonder if some wouldn't book if they hate cats?, so I tried to change it to myself, and I can't find how to do that, figured since it was my Google pic, I'd change that and it would automaticly change, nope, it changed at Google an other places but not Airbnb.  My main concern now is that I'll find the changes here are going to make me go else where,  anyone out there with VRBO, do you feel that's a better venue.?

[M81]

This has happened three times now--the third time I declined:  guest books room at 1130pm on Wednesday night,  , I accept at 0730 , 'problem with payent' which freezes my guest house for 48 hours, which precludes hostong anyone else coming into town for the big game. The guest cancels. So now I will deline ALL OF THOSE REQUESTS'  immediatel y. Also what is with people posting their dogs photos & name?  No to that too. Stop this BS.

[Joe322]

I would like to know the first name and age of each guest. I have all good experiences as a host since March of this year. I enjoy hosting and liked every guest. I had one experience, however which leads me to think that I need to know the first names and ages of the guests before accepting a booking. Usually I ask for this information in the chat before I accept. It is the only reason I am not allowing "instant booking." I was surprised to learn that two young ladies were 18 and 16 years old. I hadn't thought about it. They seemed young and I keep to myself so I didn't notice it. The experience has been a red flag with me every since which is why I ask before accepting a booking. I think it would be best to have it as required in order to submit the booking request. I would enjoy knowing what Airbnb thinks and what other hosts think. As I stated from the beginning, I have enjoyed hosting and plan to keep hosting. 

[Ann10]

I think they should allow us to set our own age limits. I had some 18, 19, and an alcoholic 32-year-old and they broke stuff and went into the secret compartment in the couch and took wine bottles out of it. On HomeAway, we can set our own limits and choose our own cancellation and other policies. I prefer that. One guy asked me if he could bring minor women, of course, the answer is no way. That was before their crazy cancellation quotas. I'd hate to think about it now.

[Bill165]

Where can I find the guests e mail address, I have to send to my guests for their free travel passes from the city (Luzrern ) switzerland and it's not on their booking page now i need to sens a QR code 

Regards 

Bill