Making reviews more relevant and useful for our community

[Airbnb]

Many of you rely on reviews to grow your business—they highlight your amazing hospitality. They’re also a helpful way to get specific feedback on what you’re doing well as a host and where you can improve. But there are times when you feel like a review may be misleading or irrelevant to future guests, and we know that can be painful both personally and professionally.

It’s tricky. Guests and hosts need to be able to share what they feel is important about their experience, so we don’t want to limit what people can and can’t say on the platform. However, it’s also essential that reviews reflect a guest’s stay and that they provide useful information to future hosts and guests. As part of our ongoing journey to get this balance right, here are some of the changes we’re making:

Introducing our updated Review Policy

With our updated Review Policy—effective December 11, 2019—we’ve addressed two types of reviews that we know can be frustrating: irrelevant reviews and biased reviews. The updated policy clarifies our expectations and ensures our customer support agents are equipped to remove these types of reviews.

By updating our policy to cover irrelevant and biased reviews, we’re strengthening our commitment to building a community of trust. These review updates build upon our existing Content Policy (which outlines the kind of content that is never allowed on Airbnb) and our new Guest Standards Policy, which will introduce a system for tracking bad guests. Under our updated Review Policy, guests and hosts who repeatedly leave certain kinds of biased reviews may be removed from the platform.

Let’s look at irrelevant reviews and biased reviews in a little more detail:

Reviews that are irrelevant

This policy covers situations where a review contains information that’s irrelevant to you as a host or your listing—and isn’t useful to future guests.

Here are a few examples:

• A guest accidentally leaves a review on your profile that was meant for another host
• A guest never checks into your space (for a documented reason unrelated to you as the host or your listing) and leaves an irrelevant review about their experience. For example, a guest never shows up, due to a canceled flight, but leaves you a review that complains about a dirty couch.

Under the updated policy, both of those reviews would be removed because they contain only irrelevant info.

There are also times when a guest comments on issues outside of your control, or unrelated to the service you provided. Those types of reviews may be removed if they only contain irrelevant content that isn’t useful to future guests. Here are a few examples of irrelevant content that could result in the removal of a review:

• A guest leaves a comment about your appearance
• A guest leaves you a bad review because they were frustrated by public transit in your city
• A guest leaves a review about the type of people in your neighborhood

These comments have nothing to do with your listing or the service you provide as a host and aren’t useful to future guests. So, under our updated Review Policy, our customer support agents would be empowered to remove both the review content and star rating.

Reviews with biased information

Our community benefits most when reviews share an unbiased view of the member’s experience. Our updated Review Policy covers the removal of reviews with inappropriate bias—this may include situations where the reviewer is attempting to extort the person being reviewed, has a conflict of interest, or competes with the person being reviewed. Here’s a closer look at three types of biased reviews that will be removed under our updated policy:

• Extortion: This is when a guest tries to use reviews to get something they want—for example, if they threaten to leave you a bad review unless you give them late checkout. Any attempt to use reviews or review responses to force a person to do something they aren’t obligated to do is a misuse of reviews, and we don’t allow it. People who use Airbnb also aren’t allowed to tie positive reviews to promises of compensation.
• Conflict of interest: We appreciate how much hard work goes into earning a positive review. As a result, we will not allow hosts to unfairly boost their ratings by accepting fake reservations in exchange for a positive review, using a second account to review their own listing, or providing something of value (like cash or a late checkout) in exchange for positive reviews.
• Competition: We’ll remove reviews written by hosts of competing listings or experiences where that person (acting as a guest) leaves negative reviews for competitive listings, or where we determine the content is intended to dissuade others from booking those listings or drive business to other listings.

Guests and hosts who repeatedly violate our updated Review Policy may face consequences, including account suspension and removal from the platform. We’ve also invested in retraining our customer support agents and improving our workflows, so hosts will receive better support in instances when irrelevant or biased reviews happen. As with our new Guest Standards Policy that tracks bad guests, our updated Review Policy includes warnings and education that can lead to suspension or removal of people who repeatedly leave biased reviews.

Updating our Review Policy is another important step in our journey of supporting guests and hosts like you who rely on relevant, useful reviews.

Your top questions, answered

What kinds of reviews will be removed by this updated Review Policy?

A healthy review system is one that respects and protects our community’s genuine feedback. For that reason, we take the removal of any review very seriously and only remove reviews that clearly violate Airbnb’s Review Policy. You can read the updated Review Policy in full, but, in short, this means a review is only removed if:

• The review is in violation of Airbnb’s Content Policy,
• The review is biased, or
• The review is irrelevant to the author’s experience on Airbnb

Guests and hosts who repeatedly violate our updated Review Policy may face consequences, including account suspension and removal from the platform.

What kind of documentation should I have under the updated Review Policy?

We can’t emphasize this enough: Always aim to communicate with guests through the Airbnb platform. If conversations happen off-platform, be sure to keep a record of those conversations too. That way, if you ever need to report a review to our agents, they’ll have—at their fingertips—the information they need to make the right decision. That said, even when you don’t have this preferred documentation, we encourage you to report any reviews that violate our Review Policy because we may be able to identify other evidence or patterns of behavior regarding that guest. 

Will all irrelevant review content be removed?

If Airbnb determines that the review contains no relevant information about a host or guest or listing, the review will be removed. Reviews that contain mostly irrelevant information are also subject to removal, but only where the relevant information does not meaningfully inform community members.

Where a review contains information that is unrelated to an experience as a host or guest, or is focused on something beyond the control of the person being reviewed, our team will determine the relevance of the review by considering how useful it is to our community of hosts and guests. To do this, we’ll look at two things:

• Does the review recount the reviewer’s experience and provide their personal perspective?
• Is the review helpful to other members of the Airbnb community? Does it provide essential information about a host or guest, listing, or experience that would help others make more informed booking decisions?

What’s the difference between extortionary and retaliatory reviews?

It’s considered extortion if a guest attempts to use reviews (or review responses) to force a host to do something they aren’t obligated to do. So, for example, if a guest threatens to leave a bad review if you don’t allow them to bring additional guests, that review would be extortionary and would be removed under the updated policy.

Then there are times when a host may feel that a negative review is made in retaliation. This is when, for example, a host doesn’t allow the guest to bring additional guests, and the guest goes on to leave a review about how inflexible their host was, or even writes a negative review about cleanliness or location. However, without evidence of a threat to leave a negative review, this would not be considered extortionary and would not be removed under the updated policy. If this happens, we encourage hosts to use their public response to politely address the issue.

Why aren’t you removing all retaliatory reviews?

While we understand how frustrating it can be when you receive a review that feels retaliatory, we don’t have a crystal ball to tell us what a person’s true motivations are. So, without a documented threat to leave a negative review or other evidence of a biased review, Airbnb won’t intervene. Here’s why:

• As a marketplace, we often don’t know the truth about what took place, and our review system is a critical feedback mechanism for our hosts and guests. That means we want as many reviews as possible to remain intact—so our community can put them to good use.
• Most guest reviews contain honest feedback about their experience and useful information for hosts and guests.

To reiterate, as outlined in our updated Review Policy, Airbnb can—and will—intervene where there’s evidence of a threat, promise of action that’s dependent on the review, or other conflict of interest and/or competition. Additionally, we will continue to intervene when a guest leaves a review that violates our content policies—including discriminatory content or a violent threat.

For more information, read the updated Review Policy or learn more about how we moderate disputes of our Review Policy in our Help Center.

How we’re tackling inconsistent reviews

Sometimes, a negative review is less about the guest’s experience in your space and more about them not understanding how reviews or the platform work—they can even be the result of an honest mistake. Earlier this year, we built a tool to help address these types of reviews by automatically detecting inconsistencies, and then interrupting the flow to give guests a chance to correct them. So, for example, if a guest gives you 4 or 5 stars in every category (cleanliness, accuracy, and so on) but then a 1-, 2-, or 3-star rating overall, a pop-up will ask if they’re sure about their overall rating.

Similarly, if a guest leaves a low rating for something like location or value—two categories we know can be interpreted differently by guests—a clarifying question will appear.

• For location, we’ll ask if the location was accurately described in the listing
• For value, we’ll ask what would’ve made the stay a better value

These interruptions force guests to think a little more about the rating they’re giving, which they can then go back and correct. As a result, we’re already seeing more consistency between the category scores and overall scores. Improvements like these help ensure that guests’ ratings align with their experience—better ratings are more useful to guests and reward the hard work of hosts.

There’s still more to come

Reviews are the backbone of our community—they help hosts grow their businesses, and they help guests gain the confidence they need to make the booking. We have a dedicated team doing lots of thinking around how to make our entire review experience better for hosts and guests. We’ll continue to improve the review system over time—please keep sending us your feedback about improvements that you’d like to see. In the meantime, we’re excited about these changes and hope you are too.

[The-Palms1]

We have exactly the same issue, but for different reasons. I don't understand the validity of location on a review at all. The guests select the location they're staying in. We've received 4's because we're not ocean-front, yet we advertise the exact location and state that's it's walking distance to the beach. 

[Steven532]

Wow,  you have had guests actually put into print the issue was about locals race?  Goodness that is terrible and they should be banned from AirBnB. It takes  a quick scan of the T&C for both host and guest that "inclusive' is a major theme.

Report those guests and report them now.

[Stacey23]

People don't have to actually spell out that it's about race to make it clear that it's about race.

But yeah, I've had a guest write that my other guest who happened to be black, "presented the picture of the criminal element." She knew in advance that the room next to hers was booked and was fine with it until she saw the other guest, and then demanded a full refund 5 minutes after meeting him and made threats (via voicemail) then retaliatory review. Not hard to figure out what she meant.

I've also on rare occasion had guests say they were "uncomfortable" walking in my neighborhood or thought the people on walks in it were a "little scary." It's a common blue-collar middle class family neighborhood with normal friendly people in it. When people of color stay, they compliment me on what a great neighborhood and how they would consider buying a home here. It's somehow only white people that think my neighborhood inhabitants are "scary." 

[Lisa226]

My home is in a primarily mexican family neighborhood, however it is mixed race.  All the racist white girls (I am white by the way) cancel on me as soon as they realize this, always saying that they feel "unsafe".  I always feel compelled to waive the cancellation fee because I am worried about a negative review.  This is so unfair.  All of my non-racist guests leave me stellar reviews and i have remained a superhost for years.  My neighborhood is colorful and safe!  I really feel sorry for racist people, because they don't even realize how much of life they are missing out on.  Sometimes i hesitate now to accept guests who are both white and female especially when they are from the deep south or mid-west, simply because they have comprised most of my negative experiences hosting on Airbnb.  Sad world.

[Terrie9]

Lisa, here's what I recommend for people who find it difficult to step outside the comfort of their own little towns/cities.  In your description, maybe state something like, "culturally diverse neighborhood, if you love and embrace being among people who don't necessarily look just like you , you'll love our home!"  My home is in the heart of the City of Atlanta, and one time I had a guest book who lives in a tiny little rural town in North Georgia.  She loved our home and it's convenient location to town, but she said "the neighborhood looked a little sketchy!"   I honestly believed because I knew the town she was from, she just didn't understand the vibe of Intown Atlanta, and perhaps thought it'd more closely resemble her quiet little town.  So my response to her was something like, "yes, although living in the City of Atlanta is not for everyone, people choose Intown homes for their stay because they want Atlanta's City vibe."  I thanked her for her review. Perhaps next time she'll be better informed about big cities. There's some folk who simply don't travel outside their little towns/cities, ever, so when they do, they have this false sense that the rest of America looks just like their quiet "vanilla" town!

[Joe322]

I like your approach. You dignified her statement and offered her a new way to think about it. Your response is classy and honest. Thanks for sharing. 

[Adrienne127]

Maybe as a way to minimize negative reviews from prospective racist guests, in your listing description, you could describe your neighborhood as a very friendly;  racially diverse area. That should give them a heads up and save you some dings on your reviews

[Chateau1]

Welcome to my world!

[Steven532]

Is that an American thing - perhaps we should suggest a naughty zone for your President?

[Susan17]

@Stacey23 

Your comments have also been referenced in the Skift article I linked to in the comment above.

[Stacey23]

Thanks! Nice article. 😃 

[Steve308]

Agree to a certain extent but in many cases, the Host can go to great effort to clarify and travelers might buy cheap and don't take the time to read prior to accepting.

[Joe322]

Agreed! It's not a bad thing if there is an area of the city where guests have learned to use caution. I see no problem if a guest notates that on the review. 

As to the features in my house, I think all is fair game. I do tell my guests that I live in my home too and not to expect hotel service. I haven't had any residual problems. I have had two guests who clearly walked in my home to find things wrong. I don't feel obligated to give that much power, however. 

[Brian1594]

Many guests don't do their homework, book last minute and end up in cheaper/sketchy areas. These reviews SHOULD be removed....

[Deirdre11]

I've just done a review for a place in Madeira and spent a bit of time commenting on the public transport. Should that be verboten too, as it is out of the host's control? It's an important part of the trip. Or should I do research on that too before I go, as well as the socio-economics of an area? For one place I was considering in Hungary, lots of reviews said it was in a dark and lonely street with warehouses around. So I didn't book it. Bad luck for the host but I want to get the place that suits me.