Hi @Sarah977,
Your somewhat shocking message about Airbnb changing their review system (by a guest) from stars to the “Met expectations”-style radio-button rating. Has kept me puzzling for some time (I’ve never been an Airbnb guest myself). And when I ask other people (whom have been a guest on Airbnb before), I never get a satisfactory answer from them (most have already forgotten about it).
I have noticed a significant decrease in the number of reviews left by guests - as well. In previous years, I received reviews from guests in about 95% of all cases. This year this percentage has suddenly dropped to about 75%.
So I’ve been searching the internet. And I stumbled on this article: https://indieweb.org/AirBnB_Reviews
That would really explain things! Wouldn’t it?
Apparently before the guests hits the stars. There is a phrase below each star:
1 = Terrible
2 = Bad
3 = Okay
4 = Good
5 = Great
Obviously I do not know how this is interpreted/translated to exactly, in other languages!
Once a guest does hit the appropriate star rating, then the associated piece of text remains on top.
I would interpret the “Met expectations”-style radio-button section (Section 3) not to replace the Overall Star rating section (Section 1). But as an additional rating. Although I do not see any feedback about this particular additional rating in my own dashboard?
So there are indeed 5 sections to be filled by a guest, during the review process.
I would expect section 2 to be a check-box style type of enquiry (I.e. You can tick multiple answers. My assumption: Because of the circle-color around the icons).
Now what does Airbnb do with this information?
As Airbnb is always desperately hungry for data and numbers.
My best guess is, that all of this is fed back into Airbnb’s AI!
We recently noticed the introduction of the Home Highlights Section in each listing. And I suppose Airbnb want to make the text in there more diverse – for each individual listing.
On top of this, Airbnb can actually use this data in combination with the Smart Pricing Mechanism.
As we recently also noticed that the Smart Pricing tips are actually improving (Especially when the horizon is about 1 to 3 months out). In the past - these tips were completely ridiculous. But nowadays they are much more in line, with what we have in mind for our seasonal pricing.
On the other side, Airbnb can also use this data to start messaging the hosts to improve their listing!
As apparently the listing does not completely reflect reality (In case there is a lot of feedback of type: “Much better than I expected”)
Although the review process for a guest is pretty extended, I think I can live with a style like that.
It’s not an awful amount of additional work. And reviewing a host can still be done in a couple of minutes.
A couple of weeks ago. One of our recent guests was able to do the review in under 4 minutes :-).
I hope this sheds some light on this topic.
