Improvements to guest reviews, house rules, cancellations & more in the latest Host Update

[Airbnb]

*Post shared October, 20th

In the latest Host Update, Catherine Powell shares how Airbnb is addressing your top concerns from the past few months and provides detailed answers to several direct questions from hosts. Thanks to host feedback voiced in workshops and here in the Community Center, there are several features being put into action. 

*To add or change subtitles to the video, hover over the video and click on the little 'Settings' wheel in the bottom right corner. Then select your language. 

Airbnb is improving the guest review process to make it feel more fair. This includes rewriting the majority of review questions that guests answer after a stay. For example, instead of asking guests if the description of a listing was inaccurate, we’re now asking if it was accurate instead. These changes will help guests leave reviews that feel more impartial and truly reflect the quality of your hospitality. 

Unauthorized parties are another top host concern, and we’re launching several new features to help protect you against them. For example, by the end of this month you’ll be able to immediately cancel a reservation without contacting support if you have valid reason to believe it will lead to a party. As long as your reason is upheld by our review team, you won’t receive financial penalties or have your Superhost status affected. 

When our team reviews a cancellation, they’ll search for evidence of a potential party from message threads or previous guest reviews. As always, these cancellations must adhere to Airbnb’s nondiscrimination policy and we’ll carefully monitor them for unfair treatment that violates that policy.

Many hosts have also asked that house rules be more prominent on listing pages so guests can both read and understand them before booking. By next month, your house rules will be visible in four different places when a guest books a stay:

1. Key house rules—like not allowing smoking or pets—will be visible at the top of your listing page so that they’re more prominent as guests search
2. All the house rules you’ve listed, including important safety disclosures, will be visible in the details of your listing page
3. House rules will be displayed again on the booking confirmation page to help better ensure that guests understand and agree to them before completing a reservation
4. They’ll also be included in the booking confirmation email to remind guests of your expectations before they arrive
   
   

All house rules must be in line with Airbnb’s policies and terms—including our terms of service and nondiscrimination policy.

To read a full overview of all the updates being put into place, visit this Resource Center article. As always, thank you for sharing the topics that matter to you and providing feedback that helps elevate the hosting community. Please let us know what you’d like us to cover in future Host Updates with Catherine.

[Katie]

Hi @Karen2731, thanks for your comment here and sorry to hear you have this issue. I'm afraid this is not a dedicated help channel - the best thing to do is to get in touch with Support so that they can assist you with this. There's a handy guide to contacting them here. 😊

[Roya67]

The problem still remains that much of the resolution is up to whichever support person you speak to and their interpretation of the policies. 

[Shivram-Prasad0]

I appreciate Airbnb's willingness to address the genuine concerns of hosts.

There are bad hosts and there are bad guests but for the most part - say 80% - both guests and hosts are good.

Unfortunately, most systems (including Airbnb) are designed for the bad 20% and cause problems for the majority 80%.

Bad hosts should get bad reviews and bad guests should get bad reviews. And the system should work towards removing these elements.

Bad reviews - by both guests and hosts - need to be moderated so they don't become tools for blackmail.

My suggestion is that any review  which is at variance with the average of the existing reviews by a wide margin - say 40% ( 3* for a 5*) should be not be automatically posted on the site but should automatically be sent to a review team. And only after hearing both parties - with proofs - should it be posted on the site.

These outlier reviews are generally rare but are the ones that cause heartburn to genuine hosts and guests. And cause long term damage.

If Airbnb is fair and genuinely addresses this issue a major concern of good guests and hosts will be addressed.

[Malc174]

@Catherine-Powell @Shivram-Prasad0. Great suggestion to have 'outlier' reviews sent to review team for assessment! I've had ONE bad review in 8 years of hosting. It came from a guest with a long-term booking who contacted me 10 days prior to arrival asking if she could cancel, but decided to go ahead in light of cost of cancelling.

From moment of arrival she criticised everything, clearly wanted to get out of booking. After one week, I agreed to her departure with full refund for remainder of month. Then she contacted Airbnb trying to get refund for week she'd already stayed, saying I'd agreed to this too and was now trying to cheat her.

She wrote a revenge review and I lost my superhost status.

Airbnb was no help at all... even though they could see the guest's messages seeking to cancel , could see my agreement to a  3 week refund, and knew she'd also tried to get a refund for the week she'd stayed.

They let her review stand  even though it accused me of dishonesty, which Airbnb's own records would show was untrue. And even though it included extensive complaints about my (previously 5 star) listing.

Dreadful lack of support from Airbnb in spite of calls, emails etc. I've never had any faith in their expressions of support for hosts since then. Commonsense says that ONE review, standing in total contrast to hundreds of other reviews, and coming from someone who benefits financially, has to be suspect!  But no, she got away scot-free, and I was left losing money and reputation. 

[Pat114]

And there may be legal issues of libel for false reviews.

[Linda1186]

Please consider limiting Instant Booking to those aged 25 years and older.  Thank you.

[Douglas331]

@Catherine-Powellthank you for sharing these changes that will be forthcoming! One comment I have related to the guest review questions is the topic of Location. The topics such as Acuracy can be adjusted,  Cleanliness can always be improved, checkin process can be modified, and Communication can be improved but Location, related to a Hosts listing, is the only topic that cannot be changed by the host. The guest is choosing to book with a listing in a particular location for a reason but if a guest is not satisfied with the location of the listing, its not like the host can simply relocate that home. I feel its worth reviewing the credibility of Location as a guest review topic. Would love to hear your feedback on this @Catherine-Powell

[Malc174]

@Catherine-Powell @Douglas331    Very good point. I think its pointless to ask a guest to rate location anyway, as it's a subjective matter, depending on the needs of each guest.  Someone staying at my place whilst on a sabbatical at the uni campus down the road would see it as 5, but someone who faces heavy traffic to get to their work might only give it 3.  It's not a comment on my location ... it's more about whether they chose the right listing for their requirements.  So it's not something a listing should be assessed on at all. 

[Brandon61]

@Catherine-Powell thank you and I'm glad you're here. This summer I was victim of 2 unauthorized AirBNB parties. I understand you have had layoffs/restructuring but I am disheartened by the deteriorarion in your claims support. After spending a great amount of time and energy complying with your processes, I was told that your reps failed to persuade the guests to reimburse me. I was then told I could either take a significantly reduced reimbursement under the host guarantee or none at all. You didn't charge the guest or kick them off your platform. One claim I opened 90 days ago is still open, with your rep repeatedly requesting the same info from me which is really pushing me to the edge. Further, I have never seen a penny for all the extra overnight guests when these parties become huge slumber parties. I support AirBNB's growth by allowing guests with newer track records to book. I go to great lengths to screen them including requiring them to explicitly agree to the key rules. However I feel that you do not in turn have my back when these people deceive me and trash my house. I used to feel differently about AirBNB's claims support and do hope you can affect a positive change. 

[Janet983]

Hi everyone. Because of COVID-19, I want to leave my accommodation vacant for 4 days between bookings so that the virus does not spread. The longest delay between bookings provided by the Airbnb software is 2 days. Please, Airbnb, increase it to 4 days as an option. I don’t enter the accommodation to clean until 3 days after a guest has left. We all need to change our way of working because of this virus so that we don’t spread it, either from guests to us hosts, or from one group of guests to the next group. I only unblocked my accommodation for a month during summer 2020 because of the virus and then realised the difficulty of having to quickly block out 4 days after a booking was made.  Airbnb, please increase your option of a  2 day gap between bookings to 4 days for everyone’s safety. Yes, of course it will reduce our income but I increased my price and guests booked with confidence. 

[Henrik100]

I have a flat located in the city centre, thus I am always very concerned about parties, prostitution and drugs. 

It would be great if airbnb could introduce a disclaimer where guests would have to accept that they would not indulge in such activities. Of course people could lie, but in terms of legal protection it would still be a help.

Best regards,

Henrik

[Eileen172]

I too had a very bad experience with a scamming guest looking for money back because she arrived two days past her agreed upon arrival date and made false claims of "filth". I lost my superhost status and Airbnb sided with her and gave her a refund off of my future bookings. A dozen calls to airbnb about this accomplished nothing other than long hold times. So very disappointed in this that I pulled this listing from Airbnb, although it is still on VRBO getting ALL 5 STAR reviews that it deserves. Airbnb needs to take better care of its hosts and they need WAY better customer service for their hosts when these types of situations occur!

[Don-and-Sandy0]

There is nothing so disheartening to a host than an undeserved bad review. One of our last guests for the season gave us our first 3 star, even though we had left the pool open for their two week stay at their request and our expense and they paid a non Pool price. Our rules and text prior to entry is that we are to be notified ASAP of any concerns. They let us know the evening they arrived that all was well and during their two weeks we heard nothing negative except after a week, she said the heat was not working and their child needed extra blankets. We immediately checked our smart thermostat and informed her it was working fine. She thanked us  4  adjusting it and we thought that was odd. In her review, she said the house was unclean, that there was a sticky brown substance on the living room table that took her 30 minutes to remove, that the floors were unswept, etc. What she didn't know is that we had stayed there prior and had deep cleaned, and had also checked it after our cleaners were in. The house was spotless! So here we are stuck with her review, which will be one of the first one  to be seen by next year's prospects. 🙁

[Sarah3656]

@Catherine-Powell add me to the list of hosts who’ve gotten a retaliatory review. My only negative review is a stream of lies about my house after I collected from a guest’s security deposit. The guest messaged me on Airbnb while at my house, praising me specifically for the cleanliness and commenting on what a great time they were having. After I collected the money, he trashed me in reviews. Airbnb said it didn’t violate the policy, so my only hope is that guests read my response to his review.

[Dawn635]

How does a host with a property that states no smoking in or on the property enforce the desire of renting to non-smokers?  Many guest just go for walks or smoke in their vehicle.  The smoke smell still comes onto the property on thier clothing, skin and hair. Or even worse the can or bottle they dispose butts in finds its way into the kitchen garbage can. We advertise no smoking for health reasons for ourselves and others.