Lack of host reviews

[Jim-and-Mary1]

Has anyone noticed a drop in guests just not reviewing a host? Since the start of the year we have seen a significant drop in guest reviews, not bad reviews, just guests that aren't reviewing. Has anyone else experienced this? We have made no changes to our rental agreement or home, photo are accurate. We even send a check out message encouraging guests to provide a 5 star review. Adding in there that we learn from our guests experiences please provide feedback. My secondary question to this is, how will this affect my superhost rating for our next qualifying period if guests aren't leaving reviews?

[Sarah977]

@Jim-and-Mary1  I haven't been hosting for a year due to COVID and having a home share listing, so I couldn't say whether it's a trend, but one thing I will say is that blatantly asking a guest to give you a 5* review could turn a lot of guests off or backfire.

The number of reviews doesn't affect your Superhost status except insofar as if you need more 5*reviews to bring your average up because someone gave you 4*s.

[Andrea4762]

Hi Jim

As a new member in this community, I noticed the same. Today I sent feedback to Airbnb Product Team because the system is not fair, guest benefit from our reviews but is not mandatory for them give a feedback to us,  Airbnb must understand that we need those latest reviews to show other potential guest we are working hard and well.

This is a community built in trust, some guest who have good reviews by their own don’t bother to write about the host because they don’t need to prove they are recommendable. Airbnb should change the policy and those guest that don’t write a recent review should not be able to book instantly or get our review back, they shouldn't be able to read our review, at the end if they have old reviews they will need like us to show they’ve been well behaved and respected the house rules.

I have my property open to essential/key workers during the lockdown and so far is doing well but I have the same issue as you about reviews.

I hope my comment helps

Have a nice day

Andrea

[Sarah977]

@Andrea4762  As a newish host (I see you have 4 reviews, but I guess you've had more guests than that, who didn't review), I understand that it's frustrating when guests don't leave reviews, as you want to build up reviews on your listing.

But I don't think most hosts would want guests leaving reviews to be a requirement. What you may not be aware of is that hosts sometimes hope the guest won't leave a review, if it was a bad guest they are pretty sure will leave a review full of complaints or lies.

One thing you can do is to send guests a message a few days after they leave, asking them nicely to please take a few minutes to leave a review before the 14 day window is over, that you'd really appreciate it as you're a fairly new host and need reviews on your listing for the benefit of other guests. Don't hound them about it, just one reminder, and they either will or won't.

And when you leave a review for a guest, while that benefits the guest if it's a good review, leaving a review for guests is more a benefit to fellow hosts so they can decide whether to accept a guest or not.

[David122]

I understand what you are saying.  I have guests threatening me with a low review if they don't get their cleaning fee  reimbursed.  Often times with no pictures or an opportunity for me to fix what ever problem they do not let me know about until after they have left.