Worried about your ratings? Don't sweat the small stuff.

[Huma0]

Hello fellow hosts. I have three private rooms listed in my own home. The rooms are similarly priced and I give all guests the same level of service. I do find it interesting though how guests rate these different rooms. While it is easy to get stressed out about overall star ratings, I've noticed a few things across my listings that have made me ponder. Perhaps these things might apply to you too?

Here you can see my three listings:

I don't know if you spotted this, but the more reviews the listing has, the lower the overall rating. So, the room with only 27 reviews has a score of 4.96 stars, whereas the room with 136 reviews (my most popular room) has only 4.85.

There are a few things I have concluded after nearly six years of hosting in my home, which encourages me not to sweat the small stuff. 

1. No matter what you do and no matter how consistent the service you offer or the quality of the accommodation, the more guests you host, the more likely you are to occasionally encounter a few that you cannot please, who will rate you down. Because of how the Airbnb rating system works, one highly critical guest, or a small handful who give you less than 5* can bring your rating down substantially, despite the numerous 5* reviews from other guests. It takes a while to bump the rating back up after a 4* review. A 3* or lower can be disastrous for quite a while. By the way, the room that has a 4.85 rating has never received less than 4* and even that is rare.

2. Guests are highly subjective and come with EXPECTATIONS. My best room consistently receives lower ratings than the other two partially because it attracts fussier guests. There is really not much of a price difference, so I don't think it's that. The other two rooms face a fairly busy, noisy road. This room faces pretty gardens. Still, it gets the lowest scores on location, despite all three rooms being in the SAME house in the SAME location. Go figure.

3. People are like sheep. On the whole, guests are less likely to rate a listing 4* if all the other reviews are 5*. There is absolutely no reason that my popular and best room (both in terms of the situation and furnishings) should get lower ratings than the other two, but that's how it is. BTW It also looks much nicer than when the photos were taken, so there's no reason for guests to be disappointed and they aren't when they see the room. They rate me down in other ways, that guests staying in the other rooms do not, even though they are getting the same facilities.

4. The room with the highest ratings has been primarily dedicated to long term guests (hence the lower volume of reviews, but this is also because I had long term flat mates in there for a lot of the time the other rooms were on Airbnb). It's rare for those to leave less than 5*. More food for thought.

All this has lead me to believe that many guest ratings are completely erratic and there is no point tearing your hair about it. Also, the lower the expectations, the higher the ratings. Maybe I should take some terrible photos of the 'best' room and post them on the listing instead and just see what happens...

[Huma0]

PS to put this into context, the 'best/most popular' room not only faces the garden rather than busy road, it is warmer in winter, has better storage, more expensive furnishings and a host of other advantages. That is probably why it's the first to get booked when guests have a choice. Still, the other two rooms rate higher. Baffling.

[Colleen253]

@Huma0 “Also, the lower the expectations, the higher the ratings.” There is truth to that

for sure. Under promise and over deliver = good reviews and ratings. The trick is in finding just the right balance.

[Huma0]

@Colleen253 

So true. 

It's weird the expectations some guests come with. The first room pictured there (the one that is most popular bookings wise but has the lowest rating of the three) is the one that attracts those kinds of guests. Many have described it as a 'room fit for a princess', but some of them come with a princess like entitlement too.

I really don't know how it looks on other people's screens, but the room is painted a very pale cappuccino tone, with gilt and green furnishings. I will never forget the guest who freaked out when she was shown the room. She insisted she had booked the 'pink room'. Even though I explained that I didn't have a pink room, she was adamant that I was trying to fob her off with a different room than the one she had booked.

Eventually, I asked her to get out her phone and show me photos of the room she thought she had booked. Same room (minus lilac bedspread in photos as obviously the bedding does get replaced/changed from time to time). I pointed out everything in the room that was the same, and that the only thing different was the lack of lilac (not even pink) bedspread. She had to concede that it was indeed the same room.

Really???!!

[Colleen253]

@Huma0 So her imagination took over and began visualizing something completely different than what is shown in your photo. Weird. That must be what’s resulting in the lower ratings. Expectation vs reality, but not because you’re inaccurately representing the space, but because the guest has painted a completely different picture in their mind. And then are disappointed and it reflects in the rating. Except your spaces are gorgeous! Ugh. People are interesting. 

[Huma0]

@Colleen253 

Do you think I should mention on the listing, "This room is not pink!", just to deter the pink princesses? I know that sounds ridiculous, but I have come close to doing it.

Yes, I do find that guests conjure up images in their own imagination of what they think the place will be like rather than what I have described.

Ages ago, I had a couple who wanted to book the place and then asked if it was okay if they took their wedding photos here, and they particularly wanted to use the garden. They were coming from the other side of the world.

I was totally astonished. I have a small, mostly paved (ugly 70s/80s paving to be honest) back yard, which is about 4x6m total. I don't pretend it's some sort of national park or botanical garden. I explained to them that I really didn't think they would get nice photos in my back yard in late Autumn, when not much was flowering. I am glad I turned them away. Their expectations far exceeded what I could offer.

[Colleen253]

@Huma0 “Do you think I should mention on the listing, "This room is not pink!", just to deter the pink princesses?”

lol. Every ridiculous notice, rule or sign I have in or on my listing is in response to some ridiculous or head scratching thing a guest has done. I’m sure the guest filled with common sense must think I’m a total ditzy control freak or something! 

If you declare ‘this room is not pink’, then you’d have to declare it’s not every other color under the sun too, and also declare it “doesn’t have ‘this’, ‘this’ or ‘this’ either”! It won’t be long until our listings read as nothing but an endless list of ‘other things to note’. Which guests won’t read anyway! AghI fear there is nothing to do but roll with the punches.

[Huma0]

@Colleen253 

Same here. I have often said to guests when showing them around and explaining things, "Sorry, some of the things I say might seem very obvious to you, but all of it is based on experience. I only mention this because not one, but several, guests have done it in the past."  

This raises some eyebrows and usually gets a laugh. Yes, guests do leave the front door open. They do flood bathrooms. They do leave big scrapes in my walls from their suitcases...

[Colleen253]

@Huma0 Yes, they do try to light flameless candles, they do pour bacon grease down the sink, they do attempt to flush rather enormous things down toilets, they do leave their cigarette butts everywhere in the yard but in the proper provided waste receptacles.….

[Huma0]

@Colleen253 

Oh, the grease down the sink. Why do people not house train their kids?

I have a guest who thought the dishwasher was 'extra space' to store clean dishes. It was a month before I realised she had been hand washing her dishes and then putting them in the dishwasher with the dirty ones. I had wondered why it was filling up so fast...

Of course, I did show it to her during the welcome tour, when I say, "Here is the dishwasher, which you are free to use, or if you prefer to wash your dishes by hand, the dish soap is here..."

Every time you think you have covered all bases with your description, rules, manual, tour etc. something new comes up!

[Colleen253]

@Huma0 “Every time you think you have covered all bases with your description, rules, manual, tour etc. something new comes up!”

lol, I know all about that. In my handy dandy ‘house notes’ book at the house, I mention where towels can be found, because some guests truly don’t suspect that the bathroom linen closet is where they might be located. That’s weird to me, but ok. Maybe I’m the weird one. After a few queries, in goes the note. I also put up a little sign on the door that reads ‘towels and extra supplies’ as a back up.

Not long after that, a guest told me they could not open the closet door to get towels because it was locked. Um, no it doesn’t have a lock. It’s a dummy knob that you just pull. Ok, no problem, now I leave the closet door slightly ajar.

I then get the below message from our current guest:

“There are many doors in the house so we had issues finding the towels but we eventually found them. I passed the closet a number of times but I thought it was a wall not a door.”

So, house manual tells where towels are, sign on door says ‘towels in here’ and said door  - with knob, so, no, not a wall - is ajar.

I’m not making this up, I swear. 

[Lenore22]

Actually if you just took a photo with a white duvet, it might make a difference...

I think it would totally be worth the experiment to swap out photos for a month with less. You will also have the boost of a "newer" more updated listing...

As I write this, I'm staying at an Airbnb as a guest with my parents. They were going on & on about how amazing the house looked. When we got here, they walked in the door and walked right out. "This is the wrong place." "This isn't it. It's not like the photos. We can't just walk in. This is a different place."

... It's the same place. The owner hired an amazing photographer with reflectors and a wide angle lens. The photos were beautiful. The next few minutes were spent trying to resolve the difference between what they expected and what they received and coming to terms with that. Personally, I would much rather under-promise and over-deliver.  

[Huma0]

@Lenore22 

The photos were taken by Airbnb photographers, which was something that was offered to me when I first listed them. All interiors photographers use wide angle lenses. My rooms are mostly large and it's difficult to get much in without one, but I do agree that some photographers go overboard with this.

The bedding in the photos is not the same as what I use now. The photos were actually taken when I had long term lodgers staying (I was listing the rooms for after those moved out). I tidied and decluttered as best I could but there was a limit to what I could do given that people were living in the rooms.

If anything, the bedrooms are nicer now than shown in the photos. There have been some small updates and improvements but they are certainly better presented IRL. Elsewhere, I have added two more bathrooms which aren't even shown in the photos and updated one of the others. The empty bookshelves have been filled and the surplus sofa removed. So, yes, I do feel like I am underpromising and overdelivering already.

The problem with the 'best' room with lower ratings is more to do with things I am not planning on changing, e.g. the gilt, silk upholstered bed. I am not going to downgrade the room. 

This room often attracts people who think they will be staying in some sort of fairytale castle or Downton Abbey, even though of course that is not what I am promising. They are rarely disappointed with the room. They are more likely to complain about the location or something else, because they think a fancy room means a fancy neighbourhood (again, not what I am promising). I try to manage expectations, but some people will believe what they want to believe, rather than reading and digesting what is stated on the listing.

[Gillian166]

i have the same situation, my most popular listing, also gets dinged a bit in the reviews. My photos of it aren't brilliant, and i think it looks better IRL (one guest even wrote that in a review). Need to find a way to set the right expectation. 

[Lenore22]

This really is the trickiest balance.