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2 weeks ago I've hosted my first group of airbnb guests and they were really nice people. As I was reading a lot in the german and english CC prior to my first hosting, I understood that it is important to get a good review. So I thought it might be useful to explain the airbnb review system to my guests before they leave.
So I told them:
My guests were surprised and made big eyes, as we say in Germany, as they had never heard about such reviewsystem before. Then I showed them a screenshot of my airbnb dashboard were it clearly says: Required average 4.7* . They immediately understood, that each and every rating below 5* would bring the average down and therefore is a negative rating.
My guests asked me, why there's only one positive rating but 4 negative ratings. Obviously it would make a lot of sense that if there is only one positive rating there should be only one negative rating also. I personally actually don't know what the reaseon for the 4 negative rating tiers is, but maybe this is the meaning.
5* - liked the place
4* - didn't like the place
3* - want to hurt the host
2* - want to hurt the host big time
1* - want to ruin the host
As it looks, the ratings 1* to 3* are for retaliatory reviews only.
Let's forget about airbnb for a moment and let's think about, how any average down to earth person would design a reviewsystem:
For the guests: With this reviewsystem a guest can easily identify 41 different average reviewratings and can easily seperate good from bad places. The average would be 3* which is fine.
For the host: If You ever get a 1* rating this wouldn't bother You much, as one single 5* rating would make up for it.
But airbnb is running a different system. They require an average reviewrating of 4.7* and if a host does not achieve this, the host is threatened with being removed from the platform. If airbnb really does it, there will only be 4 average review tiers left.
5,0 = maximum...................................100%
4,9...........................................................98%
4,8 = Superhost....................................96%
4,7 = minimum requirement..............94%
4,6 = delisted
For the guests: It is impossible for guests to seperate good from bad accomondations, as there are only very good to very very very good places.
For the hosts: If You are a superhost with an average rating of 4.8* = 96% and You get a single one star review, You need 19 five star reviews to make up for that.
Also, with this reviewsystem You can end up in this weird situation:
Host A:..............5*.................................................................................average: 5,0
Host B:..............5*+5*+5*+5*+5*....5*+5*+5*+5*+5*....
…........................5*+5*+5*+5*+5*....5*+5*+5*+5*+5*....1*.................average: 4,8
So host B, who has 20 five star ratings is an inferior host compared to host A who has one 5* rating only? Come on.
Also, this one 1* rating that host B got may not reflect a bad hosting quality, maybe this was just a 1* guest. Bad education, bad credit rating, bad behaviour, always rates badly, who knows. So this existing airbnb rating can come up with results that are completely false.
Back to grafics:
That means, the punishment potential in this rating system is 12 times higher (3.7 devided by 0.3 = 12.33) than the reward potential. So seriously this is not a review-system but a punishment system.
I took me a wile to find out were such punishmentsystem would make sense, the only thing I came up with was a prision. Because in a prison the idea is to punish people for what they did and not to reward them. Lets assume, airbnb would run Guantanamo, the US Prision in Cuba, I think this would be their system to punish prisoners:
5* - prisoner gets beverage and food every day
4* - prisoner gets beverage every day and food every second day
3* - prisoner gets beverage and food every second day
2* - prisoner gets what's left over
1* - waterboarding
One person that recently got waterboarded by airbnb is Gregory in France, You can read his story right here:
https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Hosting/To-Clara-Liang-Product-Director-Last-min-cancellation-be...
There is no question in my mind, that there is only one reason airbnb runs such a punishing review system, and that is to put pressure on hosts to accept unappropriate guest behaviour: Guests show up with more people than booked, guests show up 5 hrs past check in, dogs were not mentioned, party, damage to the property and the like. And in fear of a bad review, many hosts accept all that.
Anyway, my way of explaining the airbnb review-system to my first guests was successful. I got a 5* rating all across the board.