Importance of stars when reviewing guests

[Inna22]

A guest booked for one night and messaged me in the morning that they had to leave at 4 am due to non stop train noise and wanted a refund. There is no train service at night. I also disclose the train in multiple places in the listing and potential for noise is checked off. When I said that, she became angry that I did not trust her. This guest has 6 five star reviews. I saw that and it don't do any further research. I went back to look at her reviews and she pulled similar stunts before. If we bother to leave a review for a bad guest, we might as well mark the stars correctly. Otherwise it has the opposite effect- we are beefing up the positive review count for them

[Laura2592]

@Inna22  right?? And vice versa. I have had so many guests with glowing reviews and poor stars too-- I think that is actually more common. But as you know many hosts are very hesitant to leave any truthful feedback for a guest no matter how egregiously they behave.

[Inna22]

@Laura2592 yes, I know many hosts are worried about retaliation. I often think about that as well. However, if they have decided to leave one, might as well go all the way

[Emilia42]

@Inna22 Unlike host reviews which are rounded to the 100th decimal place, guest reviews are round to the tenth decimal place. So if a guest has a handful (say 5) of 5-star ratings and then a 1-star rating, the average will still round to a 4.5. I've given some frequent Airbnb users a poor rating and it basically did nothing to their stars. 

[Inna22]

@Emilia42 I think anything less than 5 stars for a guest is pretty unusual. You read, you book, you clean up and leave. You do not read, you book, realize you did not read, do not complain, you clean up and leave. I would immediately notice even a tenth decimal change. 

[Emilia42]

@Inna22 Agreed. But Airbnb won't show you the decimal place. They round up guest reviews - a 4.7 will round up to a 5.0 whereas a host's 4.7 will be a 4.7.

[Inna22]

Oh! I did not realize that! Thank you for the explanation. Still, if it is a one time sleep for an otherwise great guest- fine. Perhaps the host had very high expectations. I have seen hosts complain here about things I would not hold against a guest. If this is a pattern for the guest if we all ding stars every time we can make it visible to other hosts. Plus guest might reconsider the behaviour. 

[Kath9]

@Inna22  how annoying. I think some others are missing the point of your post, which is that your guest's star ratings didn't reflect her written reviews. I agree that giving the appropriate star rating is critical because this is often what hosts look at (as you did in this case). I think part of the problem is the limited categories - for example, this guest might have done everything right in terms of cleanliness, communication, house rules, etc. but then unjustifiably complained about something. Personally, I would mark a guest like this down on at least one category to reflect it in the overall stars - maybe house rules, for not reading them properly! Alternatively, guests could get an 'overall' rating just like hosts do, which has nothing to do with individual categories. Like, ' How was X as a guest overall?' Great = 5 stars,  Good = 4, Okay = 3, Poor = 2, Terrible = 1  

[Alex893]

@Kath9 I could not agree more. This guest left the place clean, communicated regularly and followed my rules. There is no category for extortion and manipulation or unreasonable demands. I will have to give her one star for communication and perhaps house rules 

[Helen350]

@Kath9 "Unjustifiably complained" - That's less than 5* communication! - Ding 'em on that!

[Kelly149]

@Inna22 guests can't even see stars, right? so retaliation should have more to do with the text portion than with stars

bad news though, non-IB hosts can't see stars either

[Kelly149]

@Inna22 to be truthful, I live in fear that someday ABB will publish what stars a HOST usually gives to their guests... bc I've had a ton of sub-par, less than 5* guests... and I say so

[Kelly149]

@Inna22 and I just got an inquiry in from a guest that had 12+ GLOWING, "I'd give this guy 10 stars if I could" reviews. I wondered if I'd seen a unicorn!

but then again, he was asking about the $25 in tax being added to his bill, so maybe not so great of a guest afterall... and now I'll never know bc someone else booked while he was thinking about if he wanted to spend that last $25 or not

[Laura2592]

I had one like that, @Kelly149 ...turns out after a little digging I discovered his brother was the Airbnb host that left the review....

[Sharon1014]

I'd like to be able to see how many stays a guest has had in addition to how many reviews, e.g. 10 stays and 7 reviews would flag to me that 3 hosts thought there was something sufficiently wrong to not review the guest.   

I'm sure that other hosts with problem guests just do what I do, and don't leave a review.  I can usually pick when it is going to be a self-defeating exercise to leave a review.  Some (very occasional) guests just need to be bypassed to avoid the nit-picking review you just know is coming (always from high maintenance guests who have been a royal pain since the minute of arrival).  So an excess of stays vs guest reviews would diplomatically flag to me at least, that something is not right.