what would be your advice on nice guests but leave a 4 star review in the end

[Joann1315]

In the past 10 month of hosting, I've found a few guests every once in a while would be nice guests and very attentive to our house rules, and not any communication issues at all during hosting, and I consider them as very nice guests. I checked on them one day after the check in and make sure to express myself available for anything. Close to the checkout date, I checked on them they also express it has been a great stay. So I thought they loved the stay, however, in the review, they would eventually write their true feelings and leave a 4 star review, and also mentioned something we haven't listed on our listing. They are definitely not the norm of the review, but it's been annoying to me that my true and sincere care for them does not even pay out for an honest communication before they left, and seems that they tend to express their true feeling publicly first and not open to the host. 

Again although these are very minor number of guests, would love to hear some advice on how to spot these guests in advance or write them a polite response in public.

[Solveig0]

Hi @Joann1315 , 

I'd think we'd all love to catch those guests! And also the ones that LOVED the stay but still only leaves a 4 star review, because they think 4 stars is good! Which it is! Except for Airbnb!

I try to mitigate it by mentioning both in email and in person that we love to host, our house is old, we really do our best, and if they find something that could be done better to please mention it to us so that we genuinely can work on creating a better hosting experience. 

And most people do! Some will never do that. As you know, guests are an incredible diverse group of people, but I find that explicitly mentioning our intent to always do better and solve problems generally gives a better outcome than just implying it. 

I'd love to hear what other people have as advice and experiences with this! 

[Huma0]

@Solveig0 

I am currently hosting a guest who has 49 reviews and has been using Airbnb since 2015, so he is no newbie.

He was telling me about some of the problems at another airbnb he stayed at. Having already had a look at some of his previous accommodations, I told him that I thought he was not being picky enough. He said that he usually only booked places with 4.0* or above. 

He was absolutely astonished when I told him that 4.2 or 4.3 was really low and that Airbnb set 4.7* as their 'minimum' standard. Of course, Airbnb does not communicate the reality to the guests, so they think 4* is really good. 

We as hosts are left to communicate it (or not and take the risk) and that is just awkward if it doesn't come up naturally in conversation. 

[Barbara2055]

Ah yes .. these are tricky. I have now tried to communicate ahead of the stay, or included in the "in-stay"comms, that if they have any "suggestions" about how we can improve or add things can they let me know before they leave as we always love the opportunity to discuss and get their ideas.. So far this seems to have worked and the odd thing has just been sent as a private message rather than reflected in my star rating ( we have around 65 reviews so far all at 5 star but i know the day will come when someone will do the 4 star rating.. ) 

[Christian-Wendell0]

Every once in a while we have guests that rate our listing similar with the hotel star rating. This means they compare the 5-star rating with a 5-star hotel experience. So we normally get 4 stars because of this mindset. We need to EXPLICIT inform guest that Airbnb star rating is NOT the same as the hotels. I would recommend something similar below having this in the listing or messaged to them.

Cheers!

Christian