Being marked down for location

[Amanda78]

I am annoyed. I have my eye on super host and "location" is my biggest obstacle. I think it's BS that we get marked down for location. I have 20 reviews and 3 are 4*, 2 are 3* for location. The guests see precisely where we are on the app. They get the street and zip and anybody with a cell phone can map this info to gauge location to whatever destination(s) they need to access. I can't lie about this. I live where I live. The guests choose me so I'm pissed that "location" is keeping me from super host. Dang it!

[Zandra0]

The only thing that counts towards superhost is overall experience.

[Kip0]

Agreed - I just looked at your ratings and they are on track for SuperHost.  The lower location stuff won't impact you.  I just got SuperHost status and had similarly a couple of lower ratings on location.

[Ira4]

@Amanda78 

I totally understand your feelings because I also faced the same situation with location rating, which it looked unfair to me. 

Airbnb has a community section that is called Host Voice. You can find it if you select Discuss and then go to the last category. 

You can also open this link:

https://community.airbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Location-rating-is-an-Achilles-heel-for-many-otherwise-gr...

Good luck with everything!  As I see, the rest of your stars are 5, so you are very likely to reach SuperHost in October. 

[James1]

@Amanda2 I understand your frustration. It used to annoy me terribly when I got less than 5 stars for location. I mean, I have a great house in freakin' San Francisco with an awesome view, what's this 4 stars for?! But now I've been doing airbnb for five years, over 200 people through my little home. We talk about airbnb, the guests and I. For the guests 'Location' is rather more subjective than simply the precise street address. It includes factors like the general neighborhood appearance, is parking easy, are there nice trees, is there a supermarket I can walk to, would I live here, and it's a little different for everyone. 

Bottom line, take a deep cleansing breath, hold it and count to 10. Exhale. Do what you can to optimize those subtle factors about your 'location' ... then become the duck, it's water off your back

[Kip0]

Totally agree with @James1.  I also looked at your listing and I don't see anything I would change about how you describe location.

I wouldn't spend any time worrying about it and I note that you have 20 reviews with a 5 star display rating and 5 stars on all the components except the location which is 4.5 stars.  That's still fantastic.  And I think you can view the 4.5 stars as helping to indicate to people that might be - let's say -  less capable with maps that the house isn't right downtown.  I have the same type of star profile on my listings because my DC area townhouse isn't right downtown and my house near the beach isn't actually on the beach.  Some people just rate the Location on what they view as an objective scale relative to all locations available in the universe.  I think that's OK.  

I would rather someone be pleasantly surprised and think "what was that guy who gave them 3 stars on location thinking," than have them think I didn't properly present my location info.

[David-and-Fiona0]

This is a huge frustration for me as well. All my communications with guests (before booking) is our remoteness and they need transport yet we still get sacked by location. Like others have said I just now take a deep breath and move on.

[Andrea9]

@Amanda78

Leave a suggestion to remove location from review in Host Voice - a platform monitored by Airbnb.

The more who do this, the better chance we have for change!

[Ira4]

@Andrea9 I already gave to @Amanda78 the link of your thread in Host Voice. Do you think it is better for us to give thumps and comment in your thread so that it gets bigger or you should open new threads with the same subject? I thought it was better for us to support one thread so that the subject gets higher. 

[Andrea9]

Oh, thanks @Ira4, looks like I missed that.

I wish I knew what had more impact - more thumbs up or the amount of new threads. 

In a perfect world I'd say they both have the same value.

Sometimes people like formulating their own angle in a  'vent', and other times simply agreeing to somebody else's is enough for them.

I tend to go for both.