"New to aribnb" guests leaving poor star ratings and what to do about it...

[Michael144]

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!

[Sarah977]

@The-Pvkid0   $10-$15/night is an absurd price for PV, even for a budget listing. You are getting cheap, clueless people because you have a super cheap listing. These kind of people want rock bottom prices and then complain about value. And they don't bother to read through the listing descriptions. Upgrade the rooms a little and charge more. There's no reason to list a private sleeping accomodation for less than a shared hostel room goes for.

[The-Pvkid0]

Upgrading the room is not an option, the owners can not aforde it. They do not have the money to buy a TV or subscribe to cable and wifi or add A/C. That is  why the price is at $10 a night. What they can provide is a clean place  with a comfortable bed and a warm shower. To top it off it is a private place that you do not have to share with anyone. What they can not change is the location. They can not change roosters crowing in the morning, the neighbour playing loud music till 4 in the morning. All of the bad points are in the listing. yes the location sucks but it is discribed in the listing and the exact location is given by airbnb and I include a photo of a map of the location.

[Sarah977]

@The-Pvkid0   I wasn't referring to major, expensive upgrades like Wifi or AC. Get some nice art or tapestries on the walls, beef up the bed with some more pillows, put a few locally-made handicrafts on the shelves, that kind of thing. None of that is expensive to do. Make it cozy looking rather than stark. 

Charge a little more, and leave some info in a house manual re how star ratings work for hosts (you can search a thread "How do we hosts educate guests...." on this forum- there are many approaches hosts use). 

And cast the rooster and loud music factor in a positive light in the listing description, also with a sense of humor. "This listing is right in the heart of a typical Mexican neighborhood- that means roosters crowing at all hours, loud music, and general hubbub, so if you want to really live like a local and are one of those folks who can sleep through anything (or bring earplugs), we'd love to host you. No Wifi in the listing, but internet cafe just down the block." kind of thing.

[Claudio-and-Moo--ส-บย-คล0]

Even if you offer is good for 10$ some guests will always still rate the factors like location harshly rather than giving 5 stars "for good location for the price".

You don't want these listings to affect your overall rating and super host status so I would list them under a different name like the owners name, your wife name, etc.

Then accept that these listing will not generate 5 stars reviews but they will probably still rent well with 3 or 4 star average at 10$ 15$ a night.

Just a suggestion. That is what I would do.

Good luck

[Braveheart0]

We are having a similar issue and using the following message for new guests...tried to keep it short and to the point:

❤️ ❤️   Welcome to the AirBnB Community!   ❤️ ❤️

We enjoyed your stay and hope you did too. 🙂 If you think of anything else that could have made your stay more wonderful, please Send Us A Message!

We care about your experience as a guest in our home and as a new member of the AirBnB community. Since we are one of your first AirBnB experiences we wanted to let you know a few things about the Rating System.

If you would like to recommend us to future guests, please give us a 5-star rating! On the AirBnB scale a 5-star rating is simply that—a recommendation to future guests. This is very different than a hotel rating and that’s the way we can continue to make it an Affordable Experience. In fact, AirBnB will not allow us to list Wise Home if the average falls below 4.7 stars overall.

I hope you will take the time to tell us what we can do better and we will make adjustments based on your feedback. You can recommend Wise Home and still tell us what we can do better privately. We value your feedback either way. 🙂

❤️ ❤️   Thanks for being a 5-star guest!   ❤️ ❤️   

[Helen3]

Personally I don't feel it's appropriate to ask a guest for a five star review @Braveheart0 .

Or guilt trip the guest implying that if they give you lower than five star, they put your Airbnb business at risk.

In your words "In fact, AirBnB will not allow us to list Wise Home if the average falls below 4.7 stars overall".

It's fine to mention how important reviews are and you would appreciate the guest taking the time to do this. You can explain Airbnb's review system  in your own words although I would link these to Airbnb's actual explanation of their rating system.

[R22]

What baffles me is that a guest writes "very clean" and then gives only 4 stars for Cleanliness. What does that mean? And what is the star rating for "Accuracy?"  How does that get rated? Same person took off 2 stars because it's "close living quarters." It's a room and a shared bath like the description reports. 

I'm wondering if asking them to rate the space etc directly like they do at hotels and restaurants might help to understand before they're asked by ABB???