Put Reviews back in chronological order to reflect listing development

Put Reviews back in chronological order to reflect listing development

Mixing old and new reviews is confusing, and as a guest I would want to see latest and up-to-date reviews, because that's the situation going on right now.

Old reviews may reflect something good or bad that might not even be relevant anymore!!!!!

 



 

Response from Airbnb

We agree that older reviews may not reflect current reality as you continue improving your listing and your hosting skills, often based on guest feedback. However, our research has shown that displaying reviews from guests of the same language and country leads to more bookings, and we want you to get as many bookings as possible.

 

The reviews that a guest sees on your listing are prioritized first by the guest’s native language and country, and second by chronological order. In some cases, older reviews may appear above more recent ones that aren’t in the guest’s native language or from the guest’s home country.

 

67 Comments
Louise0
Level 10

This latest 'enhancement' is utter madness.  It does nothing to improve the utility or user experience of the site, it's deceptive, misleading and demoralising for hosts.

 

When I rely on reviews to make a purchase decision I'm only interested in those which give a contemporaneous account of the quality of the offering; and this makes perfect sense.   Unless I'm travelling by time machine, why would I give a flying **bleep** what the place was like 2 or 3 years ago?

 

In particular, the decision to order reviews so that the reader is presented first with the views of those from their own country of domicile makes a mockery of Airbnb's espoused principles of inclusiveness and the breaking down of cultural stereotypes through the mechanism of inviting 'strangers' into our homes.  Your ham-fisted attempt at improving functionality is so obviously informed by your own cultural biases that it's a PR disaster in the making.

 
As a guest, I would find it offensive that Airbnb presumes that simply because I am located in Australia, that I would value the opinion of other Australian domiciled guests over those from other parts of the globe.  

 

Seriously Airbnb, do you think that just because we live in a particular country we all think alike?  What next?  Are you going to push reviews written by female guests over 50 up my list whenever I view a listing because, of course, we all think alike?

 

 

Gillian15
Level 4

I agree....put the reviews back in order....I thought it was only my site that has been fiddled with! Hands off please, why change what is working? 

Pete-and-Marie0
Level 1

I totally agree ..... so what can be done about this?...

Nancy0
Level 2

Let me join this thread as well. You'll see this history of this issue from another thread that speaks about latest reviews not showing. What is interesting is that this new strange approach shows up on Firefox AND the Airbnb app. BUT, their preferred browser Chrome still shows reviews in chronological order. What is a mystery is that the app last week was fixed, and the reviews in chrono order. Now this new world of by country order. It appears I've not had guests for 3 months, when I have had them every month. Please, let everyone on this thread call and or write feedback, or Tweet if you have an acct. Customer Experience Sup explains they do not acty unless they understand this is a big issue. Lord knows if they really read this area.

Andrea9
Level 10
@Nancy0, @Pete-and-Marie0, Seems they appear in order of the country you live in. So even though I live in the Netherlands, I always use the English-language site version. But either the darn algorithms register me being logged in her in NL and thus first show me the antiquated reviews by all guests from the Netherlands; OR it's because I'm looking at my own listing here in the Netherlands... We can only hope that this post here gets enough thumbs up within a certain amount of time to be considered by the ABB operatives, and continues to get thumbs up and comments to really get ABB's attention.
Darcia0
Level 4

I am happy to read that I am not the only one who thinks this is crazy. Reviews are good to know what can be improved, so I appreciate reviews. However, why is a review from 2 years ago appearing on top? I guess this is why I have not had a booking in over 3 months for one of my listings, as a negative review (the only negative review I ever got) is now at the top of the reviews.

 

Travellers get wrong information, hosts get less bookings and hosts get frustrated with all the changes, and thus Airbnb gets less income.

 

Airbnb is constantly changing, but unfortunately not improving.

The reviews should be in chronological order.

 

@Airbnb3: is anybody getting any better from this change?

Nancy0
Level 2

Hi again, back in SF. And, this new insanity is now consistent, even via Chrome plus the Airbnb app and Firefox. I've raised this to an Airbnb employee/friend. And also highlighted it to @Lizzie from Airbnb, who's involved in Host Voice. What will it take for this to be addressed? Has everyone on this thread called and Tweeted etc? If not, please do.

Andrea9
Level 10
Indeed, the insanity has reached high impact level by now, with the newest reviews slipping so far back in time that nobody will ever find the time to go read them on page 20 or so. I've also mentioned it to @Lizzie a couple days ago.
Nancy0
Level 2

@Andrea9@Darcia0et al, I tried again and called Airbnb CX today. Got a sane, intelligent responsive rep who looked into the issue and validated he saw my point. In my case, there are 8 pages of US reviews (going back to 2011 when I started hosting) before you see recent reviews, of non US guests...so strange. He said it has to do with the guests language selection on their profile, to "help increase bookings". I truly do not follow the logic, since most of my guests communicate in English no matter where they originate, and at least previously, the guest could translate reviews...I expressed my profound protest and asked what it would take to revert. He said Airbnb would research the impact and only if it were positive would it continue...as if I trust that.. Glad you involved Lizzie also.

Andrea9
Level 10
Thnks for this @Nancy0. It's so counterproductive, since the reviews in a person's own language might indeed be from 5 yrs ago and from a situation in which the listing wasn't yet on as good of a level as now. I can understand that one Russian review from 2009 and then followed by all other reviews wouldn't make a dent. But what if all the Russian reviews were so old and the new and amazing reviews then only followed on page 2? I really wish people wouldn't constantly try to fix what ain't broken and make it worse and absolutely impractical in real life. It's like when generals who've never been in battle are in charge....