New Host, Difficult Guests

[Katelyn79]

Hi All,

We are new to hosting on airbnb, just made our listing available in December 2021. We just host part time, and have had about 10 guests so far. Some of them have been great, but some have been not so great…

The biggest issue we have encountered is that we had a guest stay for one night in our suite which is non-smoking. We have this rule in our listing, in the House Manual, as well as in print format in the suite. Our manual clearly states that along with non-smoking, no cigarette butts are allowed on the property and no smell of smoke in the suite, and that breaking this rule will result in a fine of $50-$250 depending on severity.

The guest I am referring to left a cigarette butt INSIDE the suite. I could smell the smoke as soon as I entered to clean, and had to search to find where it was coming from and then discovered the butt. It took a lot of extra cleaning to remove the smell 😞

We contacted airbnb support that same day. The support worker advised us to make a claim of $50 for the break of rules. I expressed concerns that this would result in a bad review from an angry guest. The support worker assured me that the guest had already submitted their review and it could not be altered, so I had nothing to worry about. 

I followed the advice and submitted the claim. The guest refused to pay. The next day we got notification of a review. It was from this guest leaving 1 star and ranting about how unreasonable we are. 

We have spent hours on the phone with airbnb support since and spoke to many different workers including managers. They refuse to remove the review.

As a result of this terrible review, our ratings are lower than anywhere else I can see in our city. Our listing was even suspended my airbnb for the low rating average. 

This is the worst example. We have also had other guests leave 3-4 star reviews either without any negative comments (so we don’t know what went wrong) or with comments that are not accurate to our suite… 

I am feeling pretty discouraged about all of this and have no idea how we are going to get bookings and increase our ratings. I don’t know how we can avoid having guests like this that break our rules and/or write reviews that are inaccurate. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! We really want to keep this going but its been a rough first month. 

Thanks!

[Emiel1]

@Katelyn79 

As you experienced: hosts are hostaged by the review system.

Guests can do what they want, as soon you file a claim or reprimand them: bad review !

It is a major disadvantage on the Airbnb platform, you have to live with it.
Smoking in a non-smoking property is very disrespectfull behaviour.

The least you can do is mentioning it in the review.

[Mark116]

@Katelyn79  I wonder if what happened was that you sent the damage notice within the 48 hour window where guests can change their review?  It sounds like this is what happened.  Either party can change the review w/in 2 days unless/until the other party has done a review.  So in hindsight,  you would have done your review before you put in a claim, that would have locked in the guest's review.  I hope that makes sense.

You could keep trying w/airbnb CS and see if since they told you the original review couldn't be altered you want it removed.  It's a long shot.

[Katelyn79]

@Mark116  Yes unfortunately we did not know at the time, we were just following the directions the airbnb support person gave us and blindly trusted them. For future, we will be come careful about waiting until we can see the submitted review before starting our claim. Hoping we don’t ever have to make a claim again.

i don’t think we will be wasting any more time on this situation with airbnb support, we called almost every day for two weeks. They won’t do anything. At this point we are just looking for tips from other hosts on how to avoid these types of guests and how to get our ratings up when they are so damaged.

[Katelyn79]

@Emiel1 Thanks for your reply. So frustrating to hear 😞 unfortunately we left our review and we tried to be gentle because we didnt want the guest to have difficulty booking with others in the future, so we left 3 stars and wrote some positive comments along with mention that they broke a house rule (we didnt go into more detail). I think we learned from that to be more blunt in our reviews of guests, but like you said, unfortunately it doesnt help our drastically impacted ratings, especially as a new host with very few reviews it has a pretty substantial impact on our rating

[Mark116]

@Katelyn79  I wouldn't worry too too much about the rating, even though I know it's unfair and annoying. 

Your other reviews are good, and more importantly, your response to this guest was excellent and professional. 

ETA:  Seriously, do not ever take an action based on what the CS person has told you until you can check the rules yourself.  Many, many times I've been given wrong info. that I only knew was wrong because I read about it here on this forum!  I've had reps tell me it's okay to take a third party booking [it isn't], that a guest who cancelled the day of check in cannot leave a review [they can] and so on. 

[Katelyn79]

@Mark116 Thanks for the kind words and the tips. I am definitely going to be referring to these community pages, and doing my own research on policies, before calling support in the future. 

[Elaine701]

@Katelyn79 

Welcome to the magical world of hosting. 

Others have given you great advice, but I'd only add this:

You've learned now that confronting a guest with their violations is likely to result in a retaliatory review, which can be quite damaging to your overall rating, especially if you only have a small number of reviews to begin with.

They smoked. They weren't supposed to. It's damaging to your place (we also expressly forbid it) You have a penalty for that. But it's largely unenforceable. Airbnb won't enforce it if the guest says no. 

I'd wager that had you not confronted this guest, they would have written a glowing review of your place. 

There's a point where you need to decide what is the most effective way to proceed. If you lay it all on the table and look at the tangible result, ultimately, >you< have LOST by pursuing this. You gained nothing, and lost some ratings points. 

If you hadn't confronted the guest, but simply written it in your review of them, then you most likely would have come out ahead, but the guest will have lost credibility with future hosts. This is probably the best you can expect to achieve in these cases. 

Is it fair? Absolutely not. I really hate it when things like this happen. But why choose adding insult to injury, when you can steer the insult and injury in the other direction? 

Something to think about for next time. 

[Colleen253]

@Katelyn79 To add to what Elaine said, keep in mind the rules have changed, and we now have 14 days to submit a claim, regardless of when next guest checks in. After following her suggestion, you can then submit the claim, and report the guest as well. You never know, some guests will pay up. Long shot, but why not try. And by reporting, as well as mentioning their transgression in the review, you’ve given them a double whammy. Just desserts. 

Going forward, put as much effort as you can into screening your guests. Don’t be afraid to decline. No need to take all comers.

Perhaps there was a red flag or two with this guest that you overlooked. Keeping guests like this from gaining entry is key. An ounce of prevention….

[Katelyn79]

@Colleen253 Thanks for the advice. I do want to put more effort into pre-screening my guests, however I do not really know what to look for. As a new host, I have felt nervous every time we have had a new guest book, so I can't really follow my intuition yet. If you or anyone else has any tips on red flags or what to watch out for I would really appreciate it! I am going to do some reading on other discussion posts about what to watch out for as well. 

[Mark116]

@Katelyn79  here are my tips.

-The best indicator of a guest being good is good communication.  You don't want people sending you one liners 'we'll be there at 11am.  is there parking?' but you want someone who says 'Hi I'm XX, coming for YY, generally that they are polite, give you some information and background'.  That isn't to say good communicators are always good guests, but bad communicators are usually bad guests.

-People who have totally blank profiles should get some extra dialogue.

-We always shoot phone video before each guest.  This protects us if they were to claim the place was a wreck and if we wanted to file for damages.

-We always in our acceptance message ask guests to read the whole listing, house rules, check in/out times and location details to ensure the property is a good fit.  This will not fully protect you, but it's a little prompt that will sometimes get people to pay some more attention.  Depending on the vibe we've gotten we sometimes ask them to write back and confirm they've read and agree to the rules.

-We always send a 'thanks for staying, there isn't much to do for check out at XX, and give them the short list.  This helps to remind people of check out time and what to do w/trash, wash dishes, etc.

-If you are using instant book, turn everything on...ID, positive reviews, welcome message.

-Your intuition will be right about 70%+ of the time.  Not always.  I've had bad feelings about some guests who were great and had expectations of people being lovely who were awful.  But usually, my gut feeling is accurate.

-Once covid moves to hopefully it's lesser phase, consider doing in person check-in if you can.  This makes it clear to guests that this is in fact someone's house, gives you the chance to meet people, evaluate them and talk through whatever are the most important things for people to know.  

Good luck.  Just always think about Airbnb as the thing that brings you bookings, nothing else.  If you ever have to talk to them, make sure you have the rules in front of you and write and recite them back to the CS rep.

[Huma0]

@Katelyn79 

As well as @Mark116 's excellent advice, I would add that it's often worth having a look at the reviews that the guest has left previous hosts (not just the reviews left for them) which can be very telling. Many hosts leave very generic reviews or are positive even when there had been real issues with the guests.

I turned away a guest just last night because I got a bad feeling from how she had worded her review. The host had written "X's group was great!" which really tells me nothing. The review the guest left said:

"Awesome place. It was very clean too which I kind of obsess over at places I stay at. Only bad thing was this booming clanking noise at like 5:30 am which continues for about 40 mins. Only happened the one time."

Seems okay? Mmm, not to me.

First red flag is that she says she obsesses over cleanliness. This could mean that the guest is going to be very picky/high maintenance (her questions to me already suggested this) or, as I have often found in the past, guests who proclaim to be OCD over cleanliness are often very messy themselves but easily find fault in others.

Secondly, if the place was awesome, why has she used most of the word count of her review to highlight a one off incident of unexpected noise? Seems to me that the incident was not a big deal, but this guest just has to include something negative. Apart from cleanliness, she really does not expand on why the place was awesome, but rather chooses to focus on the one negative. Not a good sign.

Now, she had no reviews from other hosts, so that means I cannot see reviews she left for others hosts if she did indeed leave any, but when I told her that based on what she had written in her review, I did not think my listing was suitable for her (I live on a noisy road for example, there is often construction work going on nearby etc.) she told me that she had only had problems with two of the airbnbs she stayed at, which means there were more. She then described why they were so awful.

If she was telling the truth (which I'm not sure about), then she really did have a couple of terrible experiences, but that only makes the review above seem even more petty. Also, if she's stayed in several Airbnbs, why did the other hosts not review her? Of course, she could have stayed as part of a group and not been listed as a registered guest, but still... She had also not stayed in a listing shared with other guests and did not sound at all suited to it.

So, all of this probably makes me seem paranoid, but having hosted for a few years now, I try to listen to my gut and become more and more vigilant about spotting the red flags. I had a bad feeling about this one and was just not going to risk it, especially as this stay was for over a month.

If you want to see the reviews a guest has left for other hosts, an easier way to do it is to use the AirReview Chrome extension. It's not perfect and can be a bit glitchy but can save you some time.

[Patricia3408]

Hi @Huma0  , is the only way to view guest reviews for hosts through the AirReview Chrome extension? Is there way to do it through the Aibnb site or app? 

Thanks!

[Huma0]

@Patricia3408 

As far as I am aware, there's no quick way to do it via Airbnb. You would have to click on the host's profile for each of the guest's reviews and then scroll through the reviews that have been left for that host until you find the one you're looking for (providing the guest left one).

With AirReview, if the guest has left a review for the host, it will show up on the guest's profile directly under the host's review and, if the guest didn't leave one, it will tell you that. So, it's much easier that way. AirReview is a bit glitchy though as it doesn't always load properly.

[Patricia3408]

Thanks @Huma0 ! I just added the AirReview extension and it's certainly useful!