Negative reviews

[Bill167]

Hi,  we have a property in Topsail Island NC which we Airbnb for about 60% of the year and we live in Ohio. I’ve been a super host for four years until this last quarter and didn’t make it due to one cancellation on my end but that’s another story. I have an overall rating of 4.9 stars and pride ourselves in cleanliness and ambiance. We recently received a scathing review which I feel was retaliatory. Airbnb’s help center stated that per their guidelines there was no cause to remove this review, surprise surprise Airbnb favoring the guest. This review has impacted our summer bookings as normally we are booked solid at this time of the year and presently have about a 50% vacancy. Do you think it would be appropriate to address this review in our listing description or just gut it out?  I hate to leave Airbnb but am prepared to do that if I can’t get over this hump. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you in advance. 

[Helen3]

I doubt it's a single negative rating that is affecting your booking (did you not reply to it at the time ) ?

we are in the middle of a recession, many markets are over saturated with falling demand.

have you looked at other marketing channels ?

[Huma0]

@Bill167 

Personally, no, I don't think you should address it on your listing. Not at all. If you do that, you will be giving the review more importance and credence than it deserves. If the issues that the guest mention did not exist, they did not exist. If any of them did and have now been resolved, that's also fine. You only need to mention it if any of the problems were real and are ongoing.

You have already done what you should have, which is write a brief, professional and non-emotional response to the review. Any potential guests who read this review will see your response and should have the sense to spot it as an outlier compared to your other reviews and ignore it, or at least ask you if they are unsure. It makes no sense for the guest to only report the issues three weeks into a four week stay. Sounds like a scammer to me.

What I don't understand is, why did they do that? Did they then try to get some kind of refund or discount from you? Did they contact Airbnb trying to get one? Did they at any point threaten to write you a negative review if you did not give them one? These things will be your ammunition for arguing that this is a retaliatory review. Otherwise, I doubt Airbnb would remove it as it doesn't violate any content policies. Airbnb do not care if a review is truthful or not and have said as much in their review policy.

As for your lack of bookings, sure this review might be affecting those, but given that you have plenty of other great reviews, there may be other factors. Look around this forum and you will see many hosts complaining that their bookings are slower than they have ever been or have stopped completely. Mine are certainly slow. 

There are a number of factors to this including an economic recession, but also Airbnb's updates last year have messed up bookings for a lot of hosts (you can find plenty of discussion on that here as well. Just look for 'summer release', 'winter release' and 'categories'). Are you on other listing sites? If not, give them a try. Do not put all your eggs in one basket if you can help it.

[Lorna170]

@Bill167   Lots of hosts are still impacted by the summer update.  My advice -- register with a local realtor and/or add another online booking site (like VRBO).  I have several sources of guests and that helped me considerably when my AirBnB bookings fell to ZERO last fall.

Change your pictures around and read your description text carefully with an eye to boosting your appeal.  The sentence that you have under other things to note referring to a change in January 2021 needs the date REMOVED as it looks like you haven't updated a thing about the house since then.  I would also put in your description the details of the sleeping arrangements.  A first floor bedroom is a great draw, but the "bunkroom" second bedroom could be off-putting.

While it is great that you want to book the last week in August, I thought that it was all the availability that you had left, so I would just move on to another listing.    Make a few modifications to pricing in weeks that are not big sellers. 

Read through the amenity lists and see if you want to add or delete anything.  If you are very careful, you can mitigate the crappy review by stating that the house is treated on a regular basis for pests.  While I am aware that beach listings are pretty bare bones, your starter supplies are a little "cheap" -- mention that the guest must bring their own paper supplies but leave at least 2 rolls of TP per bathroom.  You don't offer shampoo, but what about conditioner?  What coffee makers do you have?  Figure out why private entrance is crossed off -- this is a stand-alone house yes?

Wishing you lots of bookings!

[Michael6934]

@Bill167 

What does the review say?

I think that you can address it if it actually make sense to do so.

[Huma0]

@Michael6934 @Helen3 

@Bill167 did respond to the review and I think his response was pretty good. 

[Helen3]

Hello @Bill167 

I've just checked your listing and would suggest the reason you aren't getting any bookings is that you don't have any availability until May expect for a few days in January. 

This means you won't be showing up high in the airbnb rankings as they prioritise hosts with more immediate availability.