replying to good reviews

[Brendan7]

Hi all, I'm fairly new to hosting (have hosted about six people so far in the past three months). We've been happy to get all 5 star reviews so far, but I was just wondering about best practise for publicly replying to good reviews. 

I've looked at a bunch of listings, and some people reply to all reviews, some to a few, and some to none. 

What are your thoughts on the matter, and what do you do?

Thanks so much!

[Marcus0]

@Brendan7 i rarely respond, only if the review was personal and begging for a response.  However, if the review was unfairly negative i have always responded.

To me, responding to every review is a bit ass kissing.

[Andrea9]

@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.