Hi guys, I'm not new to Airbnb but on the (very rare) occasion that I get a bad review I often feel a little stumped on how to deal with it.
I have two close friends who do Airbnb and they (like everyone else from time to time) get the occasional negative, unfair or unreasonable bad review.
One of them said 'don't reply to a bad review because it makes you look defensive' and the other said 'always reply to a bad review, especially it's unfair'. I personally side with replying politely and factually.
For my smallest room - I recently had a negative review from a guest who said something along the lines of 'Can't say this place is terrible but could be cleaner' etc etc. I've not been letting that room long and have around 10 reviews for it. Of the 10 reviews I've had eight 5* reviews, one 4* review and finally last night's poor review - but 9 of the 10 have given me 5* for cleanliness, apart from last night's guest that gave me 3*.
When the guest checked in he seemed a nice guy, he used the bathroom, showered and afterwards sat in the lounge for a bit, I made him a cup of tea and had a brief chat with him before we both went off to our rooms just after 11pm.
This morning I had a chat with him when he was making breakfast - it was his first ever time using Airbnb and I asked him if he'd had a good sleep, if everythign was to his satisfaction and he said it was great and had had a good time.
To then leave me a bad review totally mystified and confused me - I totally didn't see that coming at all. He had ample time to say 'I have a problem with x' or 'I was unhappy with such and such' but nothing.
After reading his review I messaged him politely and said 'can you elaborate on what was wrong or what you were unhappy about?' He did reply but could not nail it down to anything specific that he was actually unhappy about.
The most annoying thing however is that only having 10 reviews for that room it brings down the average quite a bit - it had previously been 4.9 something.
I guess it's one of those experiences where you say 'that's life'.
If you were looking at my room and saw nine great reviews and one bad one - would the one bad review put you off or not? How much allowance do you make for things like that when booking? I'm always curious as to how people consider such things when booking.
