Location rating is an Achilles heel for many otherwise great reviews

Location rating is an Achilles heel for many otherwise great reviews

Guests so often give a lower than 5-star rating for location because it's not midtown or in a more posh area while they consciously chose it because of lower price or availability.

It's awful and STRESSFUL for hosts to repeatedly get dinged for this.

And that juvenile Airbnb alarm sign apearing after several -5 stars is just insulting.

 

Let's just drop 'Location".

97 Comments
Ana7
Level 10

Couldn't agree more!

Keith30
Level 3

I completely agree,  I am constastly dinged for location.  My rates are half what those closer to downtown are precisely becuase Im not downtown.  I list in detail the distace to many local acttrations that my guest are interested in.  I tell them the type of neighborhood I live in. Yet they still ding me.  The 5 star rating system puts too much imphasis on guest whims or previous expericnece with other locations and do not reflect the current location.  

Judy36
Level 2

Hear, hear!  I had a guest who claimed my location was difficult without a car.  FOR HER! because she was working 8 miles away from our house.  We have a tremendous positioning.  Our garden backs onto a most beautiful park (so its quiet and not overlooked), at the bottom of our road are buses, access to the main trainline into London and Essex, major supermarkets and shopping centres within walking distance, restaurants, a river and waterfront cafes, bars etc.  

This guest happened to be doing an intern job in an industrial estate several miles away and didn't drive. She chose our place because it was the best available in the area.  Now my 100% 5 star rating has been tarnished. 😞

 

It's ok for guests to comment about location but I don't believe they should be able to rate you for it.  One persons joy (City Centre location near to work) might be another's nightmare (City Centre - noisy location).

Christine1
Level 10

I would like to see location dropped as a star rating. All the ratings are subjective but this is particularly so. How about some prompts for the guests who will be writing reviews to comment on what they liked or noted about the location. Regards, Christine 

Blake14
Level 3

We haven't struggled with this, but I can sympathize with this perspective.  After all, the map shows clearly where the guest is going.  This shouldn't be graded by the subjective whim of the guest.

 

I think the scoring on this should be changed.  I think it should guests should have to choose from a list:

 

Dangerous neighborhood - 1

Poorly maintained community - 2

Not as convenient as indicated - 3

Everything else - 5

 

Martin119
Level 3

Location is usually very price sensitive, e.g. downtown is more expensive than a suburbian area. Therefore, I do not see the point why a guest can opt for a less desired location (paying less money), and still hit you with a bad location rating.

Chris181
Level 2

Also, even though I have calles CS on this, mapping of my properties is not correct.  They are placed a block north (by commercial interests), a block east (which makes me look bad, as the ocean is 2.5 blocks, not 1.5), etc.  I get that Air does not want to pinpoint for their own reasons, but then just use a circle around the home to prevent misrepresentation of location.

 

Alice-and-Jeff0
Level 10

It would be great to define what "location" means for the ratings and/or require that guests provide some sort of reason for why they are downgrading the score.   We reach out to every less-than-5-star rating for Location and often we get a variety of answers.  These range from, "We had to walk farther than we thought we would" to "the other houses on your block aren't as nice as your house" to "we weren't comfortable with some of the neighbors".   Well, these couldn't be more different reasons and we've spent an enormous amount of time describing how far, how diverse, and how our neighborhood is under reguvination. We've done everything in our power to set expectations appropriately and guests don't read enough.  

 

A good example: a guest asked, "How far is it to X? Can I walk?"  Even though this is detailed in our listing, I responded with "Sure, it's less than a 1/2 mile."  The guest showed up with a 6-month pregnant wife asking her to walk that far in 90 degree heat.  We got dinged for that! OF COURSE she couldn't walk that far in that condition under those circumstances but their rating lasts forever. 

Ira4
Level 10

I totally agree! 

 

A guest gave me a 4 stars on Location, because the taxi driver could not find in his GPS my street, because on Airbnb it is written as Mpakou and in his GPS it was written as Bakou.  She told me to correct my address on Airbnb, but this is impossible anyway, because I cannot control Airbnb map's street names. 

 

Another one gave 4 stars on Location, because she realized that 800 meters were a big distance for her to walk. I have mentioned that distance several times in my listing. 

 

So, I also think that Location needs to be excluded or maybe with choice list as @Blake says. 

In any way, if I mislead a guest by writing that my listing is near center and it is not, it is a matter of Location but a matter of Accurancy. 

Andrea9
Level 10
Somehow it feels as if hosts are responsible for every impractical thing that happens during a guest's trip. The not so logical location of the bus terminal (although I mark it on the map I send), a taxi drivers's GPS. While hotels would just shrug and dismiss all the silliness, we Airbnb hosts carry the inexperience of our guests on our shoulders LOL .