New ways to assist review scores

[Alastair0]

I remember that Airbnb announced some changes to the review scoring to help if guests feedback and the score they give don’t quite match. They are asked are you sure.     

I am confused.  We have just had a review come in that has a 5 star for every section. From cleanliness to location and yet the overall rating from the guest shows a 4. How can that be right? We should be happy that everything was okay but overall it’s a 4. 

This is a room that isn’t booked very often compared to our main room listings but it doesn’t show up on a search so it’s very important that we have good reviews so that it shows up in the search pages.  One bad review from a guest who didn’t actually stay over a year ago keeps our score low so every 5 star is important to us. 

[Rowena29]

Hi @Alastair0 

It's so frustrating when this happens isn't it?

the overall rating is not an average of all the other stars, it's what the guest chooses to allocate it unfortunately. And the system is really more or less designed to suggest to guests 4 is perfectly ok.

There are many many threads re this on these boards.

Some host specifically educate guests about the damage anything less than a 5 can do - it's not the guests fault - in a real world 4 is a really good score - they no doubt think they are being generous.

The prompting guests if the scores dont' quite match I think only kicks in for 3 stars or below.

I can send you a link to what some other hosts say in their manuals for guests re the scoring system if you are interested.

Regards

[Alastair0]

Hi thanks for the feedback and would like to see the links.  

Its very true that a 4 is still good. I fell into the trap of letting emotions interfere and responding to quickly to a review instead of following the tried and tested “wait a few days “ before putting pen to paper.