Guest review

[Grant200]

Hi everyone,

I haven't been hosting long and we have had our first guests that haven't followed the house rules, its very hard as to know what to do.  We don't want to leave a bad review because i think we have been really lucky so far with how guests treat our property etc.  I will have to go out and replace certain things and understand this is part of running a business, at first I found their actions disrespectful but I think they were just oblivious.

Am I right that if you click "did not follow house rules and would not host again" they won't see this?

They have my number as they have been in constant contact with requests and I don't want them to come back to me with messages afterwards.

Many thanks any advise appreciated.

Grant

[Anonymous]

@Grant200  The star ratings and thumbs up/down that you supply in your review are not visible to the guests. But guest star ratings are only visible to hosts who use Instant Book - therefore, hosts who choose to screen their guests individually will not get any benefit from your review unless you are also honest in the text content.

"Honest" does not necessarily have to mean the review is bad or good - there are many ways you can put the relevant facts out there and let prospective hosts decide for themselves if they're serious enough to merit declining. Alternatively, you can humbly state which qualities of your home or House Rules made your home a less-than-ideal fit for the guest - this alerts hosts with similar circumstances of potential trouble without being directly critical of the guest.

Also bear in mind that if you say the guest "didn't follow House Rules" without context, another host may assume it was a serious violation of your trust rather than an oversight. I notice that some of your House Rules would better be described as cleaning guidelines or pet instructions in a review, as these would only be important to hosts who also happen to have these types of rules.

[Sarah977]

@Grant200 " We don't want to leave a bad review because i think we have been really lucky so far with how guests treat our property etc."

I don't see where one thing has anything to do with the other.

If your guests were disrespectful, that needs to be part of the written review- there is zero point in writing a review if it doesn't reflect reality. Leaving honest reviews helps all hosts to decide whether to accept a booking or not. Would you want to see a string of good reviews for  guest who was actually a bad guest? So you accept the booking, only to find that the reviews weren't honest and the guest is a nightmare?

If you feel that the mess or damage was simply a matter of being oblivious rather than willfull, that still needs to be mentioned in the review, but it doesn't have to be harsh. "More attention to cleaning up after themselves would have been appreciated" or "Guests did not exercise care in not damaging items in the home", something like that. And also mention positives, if there were any- good communication, quiet, whatever they did right. 

[Grant200]

Thanks for your comments Sarah