@Abi4 I just had someone give us 4 stars. The only complaint they had was the location - apparently as described but further away from the town center than they thought. It’s 10 minutes walk. At a leisurely pace. And why am I responsible for what they thought?
The other week there was another one who gave us 4 stars. They gave us 4 stars on most performance markers (except cleanliness) incl. communication. That really bugs me because their reservation email consisted of a full stop, their response to a message from us re check-in was almost rude, they didn’t introduce themselves on arrival and their ‘review’ contains nothing but a full stop. As you can imagine I wasn’t very happy with them but didn’t want to be unkind and gave them 5 star. I could slap myself for that.
Before that we’ve had guests who found the fact that they had to meet me on arrival a real imposition, gave us 4 stars overall and 2 for the check-in!?!
We’re in Australia and it’s stupidly hot here most of the time so I don’t think this has something with the lack of sunshine (although maybe too hot is not good either). My experience is that many people have a sense of entitlement, very unrealistic expectations and no idea what is involved in hosting, all the work, time, resources. I suspect they chose Airbnb because of the price and not because they enjoy the experience of staying in a private house and/or potentially meeting someone new. But they still want the luxury resort. We charge less than a second rate motel here in town and sometimes I’d like to encourage people to stay there and see what’s on offer to gain some perspective. Seriously, we can’t provide 5-star-hotel luxuries for that price. Not even a 5 star hotel could.
Some guests really make me dread the next arrival. That said - many people are just lovely, tidy, friendly, chatty and appreciate the job you do as a host. I’ve had many of those and I think I’m getting one of those tomorrow. Looking forward to it.