@ Clare and Andree
Maybe I can help explain Helen's ask and clarify this strategy which can be very useful...
While you are right in that the guest cannot see their review until they write one back, a host like you and myself can usually predict if the review will be bad, average or very good. How can we predict this? Well, if the guest has pleasant interactions with you and messages positive comments during their stay then you can be safe to assume they will leave a good review.
However, if a guest is a nightmare because they are breaking your rules or are incredibly demanding and you have asked them to follow a rule and they respond with a rude comment or ignore your request, they are smart enough to figure out that you will likely leave them a bad review. The guest knows that and often they will not write a review of their host because they know their host will write one back and leave a bad review. For those guest who don't have any reviews at all, this can be very damaging becuase no host will accept a guest with a horrible review. So what happens is those guests who are clever enough will not leave a review in the hopes that you do not leave one for them. However, if they do write a review, they know that you will receive an email notification informing you that "your guest left you a review, leave your guest a review to see the review they left for you"
So this is essential a game that both hosts and guest play and rightfully so. I am a host and I recently had a horrible guest who smoked marijuana in my house. When I kindly asked her to stop doing so, she went on a tantrum and started complaining everything about the house. Meanwhile we have a perfect 5 star rating and nothing but happy guests. She then called airbnb and made false claims about the home. Why she did this is still a mystery to me, my guess is that she was incredible vengeful and does not like people telling her what not to do even though she was breaking a key rule which was incredibly disrespectful to do in someone's property.
Long story short, after she began to deflect from her behaviour by making false claims of my home, I told airbnb that I wanted her to leave and she thankfully left.
It is now day 11 and she has not left a review. The reason why is because she knows I will leave her a horrible review if she leaves any review for me. She is counting on me not writing one and thus the reason she is not leaving a review.
I am still very upset about what happened and I will wait until the 11th hour to leave her a review so that she will not have time to leave a retalitory review for me.
Hope that made sense?