What do you message to encourage guests to write a (5 star) review?

[Alice425]

I’m quite new to hosting and I’m beginning to appreciate that Airbnb rewards hosts for the percentage of guests that leave a review, besides the star rating of any reviews.  It seems to me that we can influence whether guests leave a review by writing a nice message to them on checkout.  

I think it is crass to ask for a 5 star review outright. Perhaps there is some other way to communicate the importance of it to the guests?  Also, what about the timing?  Do you “hit them up” on the day they leave?  Or wait a day?  

Thanks for for any Input!

[Heather289]

I stayed in a holiday apartment in Spain recently, and they messaged me to ask me to give them top marks in the review, and didn't really like receiving that message from them.   So I would never ask them to leave 5 stars.  

I message my guests to check all is well shortly after they arrived, and usually they say "great", and I message them again the night before they leave, reminding them of the check out time, hoping they have had a great time, and wishing them a good onward journey.  Again, they usually say "we had a great time".  

Then, feeling confident about the review, I simply do their review really early on, so that they will get reminders that if they want to read my review, they should do theirs.    Then I usually get my 5 stars the same or the next day.  

If I haven't had good chatty responses from them during their stay about it being "great", or they've been a bit quiet, or whatever, then I leave doing their review till later, so they don't get the reminders, and then usually, after 2 weeks, they will have forgotten.  

[Quincy · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone,

Please note that this content has been archived.

You can still access if if you have the link but it won't appear when you search on the Community Center.

For more information about reviews, please check our article on "Writing Reviews". 

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Thanks