How to Respond to a Negative Vacation Rental Review

[Tim209]

In my last blogpost, I talked about vacation rental cleaning and other issues that can lead to bad reviews [link hidden]. Even if you take precautions, you will eventually receive a negative review on AirBnB or VRBO. So, how do you deal with bad reviews? I recommend these steps below:

1) Remain Calm
It’s easy to get upset as a vaction rental host – especially if you receive a bad review when you think you did a great job. Even with screening, you’re bound to get a guest that’s plain delusional and they can leave a negative review that’s not accurate or truthful.

Yet, it is very important to stay calm and not go on a tirade for everyone to see. If you seem emotionally unhinged in your response, public opinion will swing against you. Take a deep breath and plan your response – your vacation rental revenue depends on it.

2) Plan your response
Depending on how close you manage your rental property, you might not know what happened. The first step is to take some time and gather all the facts. Speak to anyone who may have interacted with them – vacation rental cleaning staff, property managers, neighbors, police.

3) Get a second opinion
Once you have gathered all the facts and formed a calm opinion of the situation, speak with someone you trust to get a second opinion. Like it or not, your perception may be skewed since you’re on the defensive and getting a second opinion is important. If you know someone who also has a vacation rental, they may be a good resource in this situation.

4) Reach out
Ideally by phone, set some time aside to talk to the offending guest. But it’s important to take the mind set of working with the guest and not against the guest to resolve the issue. Make sure to stay positive and at the end, don’t forget to ask them to remove the negative review.

[Christian65]

Is this just hidden advertisement for turnoverbnb?

I like many of your points apart from the last one. Ideally you'd communicate face to face but if that's not an option its more important to have written communication within the Airbnb messaging system rather than a phonecall you can't document.

In case of a dispute between a host and guest you would want to have the possibility of getting help from the support team and from that specific communication Airbnb would more easily be able to assess the situation and act accordingly with the written correspondance instead of an undocumented phone call where its a matter of he said, she said.

Also, its always good to sleep on it before ranting on and try to be level-headed instead of being emotionally invested in the moment.

[Tim209]

And before someone comments on this, it's almost virtually impossible to remove a ABB negative review, but for those of us that also battle google reviews...

[Fred13]

1. Do NOT respond until you have slept on it.

2. Refrain from the much-too-often, auto apology respond that starts with: 'I am sorry you had a bad...". Unless you really are.

3. Because you have slept on it, now hopefully instead of being emotional perhaps now you can see the absurdity of the situation, or even the humor in it. This will help with the tone you adopt in your response. Keep things light-hearted, its not life or death.

4. If in disagreement, make sure to come across more reasonable than your 'opponent', via logic not ego.

5. If you get another's opinion, do so from someone who is brighter or more experienced than yourself.

6. Keep responses ~short~ and to the point. Every situation is different, sometimes a dismissive, cordial, positive or even cheerful tone is in order, no one model fits all. Refrain from the 'long story'.

7. Consider leaving no response at all; especially with the unreasonable who tend to expose their stupidity or lunacy without your perticipation.