Beware -- a guest's prior great reviews might be from a hotel not from a home-sharing situation

[S14]

I accepted a booking from someone with 4 5-star reviews. Based on the number of great reviews, I trusted her when she wrote " I have read all the house rules and me and my party of 5 agree to the rules." -- Two of the prior reviews were in 2020, Covid time, when parties have become the biggest problem for many hosts.

Now that they are here, it's a loud party 24/7. Disaster.

So, I went back to look at the prior reviews. None of the Covid-time reviews were from people actually sharing their homes (the original AIrbnb concept). It is obvious they are from hotels. I had not known to look for that. Well, if someone parties in a hotel, the host wouldn't know because they aren't there!

I contacted support who told me that hotels are now allowed on the Airbnb platform.

So, when looking at prior reviews, hosts need to know to drill down deeper. If you are a home-sharing host, I suggest kind of ignoring any reviews from hotels because they are not comparable.

Just another case of Airbnb failing to notify us of an important change.

[Anonymous]

@S14 Is it really that much of a change though? Aside from hotels, many reviews would be coming from remote multi-property managers who didnt personally meet the guests or communicate with their cleaners about the state of the property. And more reviews still come from hosts who won't say anything negative out of fear of retaliation. And then there are all the reviews that are absent because they weren't written in the first place.

Anyway, just because a guest partied at one place doesn't mean that they behaved the same way at others. It's not the fault of past reviewers that you lost control of your own property. 

[Laura2592]

@S14 my last poor guest had one review from a property manager that only spoke about how glad they were that she chose the property. They still gave her a 4 on cleaning which was definitely kind. 

The only thing I would recommend is to leave an appropriate review and star rating if you have IB. That will at least alert other hosts that the individual is bringing more guests/throwing parties/additional clean up needed. 

[Dale711]

@S14 

I fully endorse your view, 

                   "So, when looking at prior reviews, hosts need to know to drill down deeper. If you are a home-sharing host, I suggest kind of ignoring any reviews from hotels because they are not comparable."

Yes, It's a fact. That's true.

[Sarah977]

@S14  Whenever I see generic type "Nice guests" reviews, I totally dismiss them. When I have drilled down deeper, as you put  it, cross-referencing to see how  that host has reviewed their other guests, I see that every one of their guest reviews says "Nice guests".

The only reviews that are of value to me are those where I can tell the host had some interaction with the guest, or is at least a hands-on host, not some big management company.

You've had stories about  bad guest scenes before. I don't understand, as an on-site host, how you allow these things  to happen. How can there be a party going on right now "24/7" that you do nothing to prevent or stop? I don't understand why you take on the role of being a powerless victim of bad guests. It's not like you live 5 hours away and don't know what's going on.

[S14]

@Sarah977 Who said I do nothing to stop these things? Several times, I got Airbnb to cancel the rest of the reservations and get them out. Other times, I complained to the guests so much they just left.  I am in constant contact with the guests. I do everything within my power to stop these things. Obviously. Do you suggest I get a baseball bat and clobber them? Please let's try to make these discussions constructive. I live in NYC. It's very different from most places. I don't know how to explain it to you, but I don't think I need to. The police in NYC will not -- absolutely will not -- come to the house to tell people to stop smoking. Sometimes Airbnb helps a little, but usually not. At the moment I am sleep deprived from actively working on stopping something literally all night long. I finally got them to leave at 5pm. I'm exhausted. That was not the subject of this post. I was writing about distinguishing between reviews from hotels vs reviews from home sharing. I was not writing about anything else except tangentially. If you don't care about this issue, there's no reason to comment. I thought some other hosts might appreciate the heads up. Not much of that around here. I was not asking for advice in this post.

Please everyone, let's try to treat each other with respect.

It's not you Sarah, but some of the other comments in this thread are outright nasty and disrespectful to me. Others of the comments here are just silly, like the person didn't read the message I posted with comprehension.  (Like the guy accusing me of "blaming the reviewers"  for my "loss of control of my home." Rude, inappropriate, and irrelevant. I'm afraid this forum has become like Facebook. It's not a safe place to discuss issues. I'm not going to post anything here anymore, as it's just not useful most of the time. (Again, not you Sarah. You have sincerely tried to help me in the past, but since we are in such vastly different markets, it was difficult for you and I to connect the dots, despite your best efforts.)

I had thought that if someone had similar issues that we could compare notes with each other and help each other. If you have no idea because you don't experience these things, there is no need to comment.  I'll just keep managing my issues the best that I can. I am hardly an idiot. I'll figure it out myself.

Goodbye folks.

[Sarah977]

@S14  I did indeed have interest in the topic of sorting through reviews to determine what is valid, and that was what I responded to first, saying that I cross-referenced reviews as well.

I really wasn't trying blame you for having bad guests, I feel bad for you getting these kinds of bookings, and yes, I am in a completely different location, I just have a hard time to understand why you even let these folks in the door. It would seem that by now you would be able to tell what might happen by some warning signals, but I must be missing something as to why you can't.