Rating system needs work!

Mike323
Level 9
Middletown, PA

Rating system needs work!

I'm a huge fan of Airbnb; arguably the largest hotel business in the world with no real estate. They deserve props for that, and I'm enjoying the peripheral benefits of its reach and platform. 

 

That said, my concern is the rating system. The proverbial carrot is hung in front of hosts to maintain a high standing. That's great until a guest accidentally, or unknowingly, uses the stick instead to whip a host's rating.

 

It's kin to giving a loaded gun to a child with the safety off and zero instruction.

 

I recently had a first time guest leave positive comments, and ratings in individual categories, but a poor over all rating (the only metric that counts). When I inquired to the guest, they said they intended to give 5 stars and reached out to Airbnb. I also reached out to Airbnb, but it has not changed.

 

I recently got another "accidental" sub rating, and the guest said they intended to give 5 stars.

 

Maybe I'm missing something? Perhaps guests are just inherently passive aggressive, and lie? I hope thats not the case. I just want the rating to accurately reflect guest sentiment. If that happens to be a poor rating then so be it. However, if I can't go back to guests of poor ratings to discover areas for improvement, then what use is the rating to me as a host, or potential guests?

 

It seems to me though, that the ratings are more pass/fail than a true measure of quality or customer service, which is actually what all parties want to exalt. Cream should rise to the top. And the process should refine what all of us do, and create a better service.

 

As a service provider there is a conflict of interest for me to rate a guest poorly. So I don't. I never give a bad guest review. I will privately correct issues and leave no review.

 

Admittedly, I don't know what the answer is, but then my job is serving my guests not developing systems and platforms. It's unfortunate that years of hard work can be too easily wiped out by a couple of careless key strokes with no way to fix honest mistakes by guests. That just doesn't seem like the best way serve people which is ultimately what this is about.

3 Replies 3
Victoria567
Level 10
Scotland, United Kingdom

Please leave a factual review of all your guests to help fellow hosts.

Not leaving a  review is not helpful either for your fellow hosts.

 

Perhaps these guests you are thinking of are such guests who slip under the radar due to either no reviews or the vague reviews that are proliferating from fellow hosts.

 

With no honest facts in guest reviews or no reviews at all,  the entitled or poorly behaved guest just marches through air bnb from unsuspecting host to host.

 

 

Fellow host......I’ve just had the guest I would NOT want to host again and they got a 5* star, review so WHAT THE HECK, is going on?

 

Other host.......Oh it couldn’t be that bad, just chalk it down to experience as it WILL make YOU a better host. I suggest that you don’t cane this guest, just write “best suited to a hotel” as EVERYONE surely knows, what this guest did in your family home.

 

Fellow host.......but that’s so vague, how’s that going to help this guest bouncing around air bnb from unsuspecting host to host?

 

Other host.........it’s ONLY a review, for goodness sake! It soon gets buried anyway, but most  important of all, I DONT want to risk my STATS!

 

Sound familiar? 

 

 

You make valid points Victoria. I haven't had any real horror stories as of yet. Surely there has been disappointing guests, but there's really 3 broad categories of guests as I see it.

 

-Guests that you recommend because they were awesome, or even if you didn't love them they might be fine guests for the next host.

-Guests that you're on the fence about; they're character flaws are such that you can't in clear conscience say you recommend them, but you're not willing to "banish" them (I have bad days too, after a 12+ hr work day I might not be the warm and fuzzy host prior guests experienced)

-Guests who exceed the limits of grace and understanding to the point you can neither recommend, but also insist they're a hazard to society.

 

Maybe Im wrong but, I don't see the distribution of responsibility as something to lay equally at guests feet. The bulk of it rests with me the host. A guest's job in my opinion is just to be a guest; be reasonable in their expectations, and basically not wreck the place. It's possible Airbnb is an entirely different experience in another city? For my area, I don't feel that having a profile littered with "drama", or heavy critiques of guest feedback attracts the right kinds of guests. I say market to the audience you want, not to the audience you wish to avoid.

 

That dynamic means my review of guests is pretty light, with a fair amount of latitude, and often truncating both the positive and negative peripheral elements. In contrast a guests review should be something that has useful content that a host and guests are enlightened by. Ideally issues need to be brought up in real time privately to be addressed vs. a public non retractable complaint afterward, especially if the opportunity has been afforded to a guest.

 

The question is how to build an affective system that encourages growth and rewards the members of that group for demonstrating the kind of performance or behavior that you as the governing entity want to see repeated. What's the most affective way to insulate the community as a whole from the 1% of mistakes or undesirable members? I would like the 0.2 stars worth of cushion to be spent on those situations where I dropped the ball as a host, not carelessly wasted on simple misunderstanding of the interface by a guest. Maybe the system we have is as good as it gets? Or perhaps tweaking some vulnerabilities is needed? Anything that's done, or not done, will have unintended consequences attached.

Mike,

even though i just started this year as a host I already have similar thoughts. I do not know if anyone from Airbnb is reading the posts here, but I realized that perhaps the best way to have a more reliable rating is to increase it from 1-10 scale instead of 1-5. one star less on the first scale is less "damaging" for both hosts and guests compared to the latter scale.

For myslef, being a new member, one star less in the scale 1-5 is terrifying when the local competition is above 4.8/5 stars! Such a high rating implying total excellence in the whole region is unreal. Perhaps increasing the scale may assist both parts be more realistic and accurate and eventually everybody will be able to accurate determine what suits him/her best and the hosts how to improve themselves

Another more tedious method might be the categorization of the houses so that the comparison will be narrowed more accurately based on size of the house amenities etc. For example, I cannot be compared or shown in the same category with a house that has a swimming pool.