Hi,
Not sure this is the right audience here, however I'd like to share my experience and suggestions. Do you notice too guests "quality" has become worse and worse? I have been hosting for some time in Thailand, super host but I have just been hit lately with some really consecutive bad guests ("free riders"). I never raised as much as deposit claims (pretty much one per booking) or have so much trouble as lately so it made me wonder what has happened to the people or Airbnb in general.
My last guest made me wonder. How can someone be so bad with his reviews. How can his experience be so bad while all others enjoyed very much. It reminded me someone who eat his meal in full at the restaurant but would complain about the food when receiving the bill. They seem to all follow the same pattern, speak very little english, first timers, consumings 3x more utilities and having somehow a lot of small complain or needs to fullfill and expecting hotel services like regular cleaning, bed sheets and towel changes or plenty of spares. I have used these information in my listing to discourage such people, let's see the results.
My suggestion is the review and the rating of the guest should be upgraded and shared between hosts. That guest in question had a lots of complain ranging from how to setup wifi on a TV to expecting, irrelevant crack on the floor or even asking me to help him to change his currency. He always tried to play the nice guy, at the end said his stay went ok but unleashed everything on his review and trust me that was awful. It almost damaged all my work in providing afforadble accomadation to many people and just make me wantto quit and put my places on long term rental as let's face it, as Airbnb is built there is no future for hosting without losing money at long term compared to normal rental. His reviews had some basis but all of it was so much exagerated to the point it was far from the truth or realistic.
I did write myself a good review to him as I had no reason to not to. He was being difficult but it might happen sometimes people struggle to settle down. However post reviews I would not recommand this guest to any other hosts as it confirmed he was not someone reasonable (at all). He is likely to behave the same and keeps abusing the system unless he realises he has to book an expensive hotel or a luxury listing that he will never do anyway.
Other very similar profile, they were being very arrogant and not impressed at first at check in, they changed completely their attitude at check out; I understood why; there kid messed up the whole bed linen and mistaken doors with coloring papers; none of these were even attempted to be cleaned up.
For those I had no reason to publicly not recommand them. Things happens and they should be allow to keep enjoying Airbnb listings. However post review, guests will always show their true colors, I would certainly not recommand a few or just would love to simply tag them as not nice or comprehensible people. As a host I would like to host nice and sympathic people in my home and not just making money from it.
On the other hand I had guests so nice and lovely, even a good review on their profile didn't make them stand out from the crowd. For some, for instance, they were behaving so much like their own home, even improving my place. When I received the electricity bill later I even wanted to offer them a discount on utilities they over paid. However that didnt make much sense economically due to "free riders".
Just wondering what you guys think and how can we raise this sort of improvements to Airbnb so hosts gets more tools to host people they like without failing in the discrimination and having to raise stupidly prices to keep renewing furniture or decoration to cater to the free riders. I think the simplest suggestion is to be able to receive a feedback from the hosts post reviews and be able to share it between hosts. Allowing a feedback on utilities spend also is useful. I would like also also to be able to know if it was a dispute during a resolution with this guest.
Thanks
