@Brendan7
I've given this quite some thought and seen a number of hosts' review pages with regular replies to reviews to get a better idea of what I would think as an outsider.
In the end I keep coming back to not finding it all that great:
- all those replies tend to cause a lot of 'clutter' as often seen on social media
- the reviews themselves go under more
- if there is a host reaction to an unfair/untrue review, it won't pop out
- if you start doing it as host, you'll have to continue, otherwise a non-reply will look as if you didn't like the guest
(which to me makes it feel social media-like again)
- And if you often use a generic reply, your reviews will reflect that repetition very clearly - maybe not so desirable?
So personally, I've decided against reacting in general on the public review section, but I might comment to a guest on the message thread.
But that's me, while everybody has to find what they are comfortable with.