Hi All,
I have not tried posting here, so I am going to and see if I can get some feedback and figure out what to do and if my ideas are good.
For context:
We are relatively new to hosting, though we have now gotten a superhost status, and I have 14 reviews and 18 completed trips (probably will be 17 reviews by the time they time out, seems almost everyone leaves a review). We do not list our place all the time, and when we do we have almost always had bookings come in.
We have almost all 5 star reviews for everything. The only reviews we seem to get that are not 5 stars across the board are from people who are new to airbnb, and leave positive comments, and seemed to be completely happy with the place, but decide to leave 4 star or 3 star reviews appearing to believe that is a positive review.
I do not know how airbnb explains the rating system to guests, I was a guest before I was a host and the thought of giving the host less than 5 stars did not cross my mind as the place was as I expected it to be. I have started with my last few "new to airbnb" guests, sending the below message. I am posting here to see what other hosts and guests might think? I am not sure about this, but I thought at least a guest should know if they are going to rate us poorly with 3 or 4 stars that it is a problem for us and negative since they cannot change it after. What do you think?
Hi (guest name),
I wanted to thank you for staying with us and tell you I hoped everything was great in your stay. I wanted to ask if you could leave us 5 stars for a general review, and to leave us 5 stars on each of the sub sections. If you do decide to give us any negative reviews (less than 5 stars) I hope you can tell us what we can do better and I promise we will make adjustments based on your feedback. You can leave us 5 stars and still tell us what we can do better and we will certainly take your advice, but leaving us less than 5 stars is encouraging people to avoid staying with us
I am asking because I noticed you are new to Airbnb and I wanted to tell you that on Airbnb anything below 5 stars is a negative review. I have not left you a review yet, and when I do I will give you 5 stars on everything because you were a great guest (anything less than 5 stars would be telling other hosts not to have you stay with them). You can change your review until I leave you one, so I wanted to give you a chance to update your review if you wanted to. Any section with 4 stars tells people you would not recommend staying with us, and a 3 star review is equal to warning people to stay away. I hope you are able to give us all 5 stars, it would be greatly appreciated. In general on Airbnb giving no review is the way to say things were less than perfect, but giving 4 stars is very negative and lets people know they should not stay with us.
I hope that helps, I am only sending this because we have had a few people new to airbnb leave us a 4 star review and later not understand that was a very negative rating. We have reached Super Host status on Airbnb, and for reference we would lose that rating if 2 of 10 people gave us a rating of anything less than 5 stars. We hate to have to ask and explain in regard to reviews, but every negative review we have gotten has been from someone who told us they loved staying with us and would recommend us, but still gave us 4 stars because they thought that was a positive review and this has hurt our ability to rent our place.
I hope you had a great stay and a great trip home! Please let us know if you would like to stay in Santa Monica again!
Thanks,
Michael ***
I am interested if anyone has any ideas or thoughts about this. I am thinking of just starting to refuse bookings from new members, but I actually want to allow new members a chance to stay at a nice place if they seem reasonable, though I am thinking it might just not be worth it. We have never gotten anything but 5 stars across the board from people with any previous experience and ratings.
I think many people who are new to airbnb think my home is a hotel, and when it is not they think that is some kind of failing even though it was exactly as described and is well taken care of etc.
I had responded to some guests in the review response the past, but I think that is probably not as helpful as I wish it would be, because future hosts do not see that unless they do some research. I have taken to clicking on the hosts who have reviewed people before I approve a booking so I can read any responses the previous host has left to the guest review. I am not sure how many people do this, but I think we should since we cannot know what a guest has said until we leave a review, and anything that has to do with the review process will not be visible other than in the response from the host. Of course, for new people who have no reviews, this is not helpful at all.
I recently had one guest, that though he left me a good review and a good star rating seemed offended by the fact I sent him the message asking for the 5 stars and explaining what I think the reviews actually describe to the community. I would rather have positive reviews and a negative private message, but honestly I am thinking maybe just refusing bookings from new members might be the way to go.
Do experienced hosts with nice places eventually just start refusing bookings from new members to avoid this drama?
Thanks for any comments or experience!