Reviews

[Irma370]

Hello, do you   owners have  same problems as we do,like  guests  are  very nice and they  come to spend  their  time  with us, when they are  in our place everything  is top 10, no complains ,no  regrets, many words of  gratefulness ,but  tomorrow there  is like  akward, very bad reviews and  low scores, which are  not  exact  or objective any way? It has become very periplexing , and  annoying .Thank you  in advance 🫶

[Elisa]

Hi @Irma370 😊

I'm sorry to hear about your concern, but I'm glad you brought this topic up here.

I'll mention some experienced Hosts who can give you the best advice on this:

@Guy991, @Robin4, @Frances3408 and @Dr-Jayanthi1.

Thank you in advance everyone. I look forward to hearing your ideas! 

Warm regards 🌻,

[Frances3408]

@Irma370. Hi Irma, no I dont have this problem and I dont have your lovely views so I try to make up for it in other ways by always putting myself in the guest's shoes.

However I would say that its so important to manage guest expectations before they arrive (how much personalised communication are you doing) and to always try to exceed their expectations once they get there. You do this by writing a lot more in the property description area of your listing of what is and what isnt available (use Things to note in more detail).

Clearly even the grumblers love your location and views so work on the things that you can change. How do they get their first morning coffee and/or breakfast without getting in the car? Is there some way to provide a welcome basket with a few treats to tide them over? (if you provide this then mention it) . Can they access an area of the restaurant to make a coffee or tea? Could a small fridge host complimentary milk and water (again either in rooms or restaurant area).

And try not to react to any criticisms, take it as one person's opinion and thank them for their feedback and a simple "all mattresses are near new". Maybe for them it was a quality issue. Your responses are for future guests, not the unhappy departed ones (who wont tell you) and by the time the review is posted its all in the past. You have some great reviews so remember that.

[Robin4]

@Irma370 

Irma, the Airbnb review system is problematic for hosts, it is not like a normal review system where you have a floating average rating, with both plus and minus increments either side......'Average 3.9 * from 247 reviews'!

Airbnb's review system is more of a punishment system than a reward system, there is only 1 default rating which every host is told they should strive to achieve and that is 5 star. Anything less than 5 star means the host has some work to do to be that Airbnb default host.

Obviously Irma, this is nonsensical! Every guest has a differing idea of perfection.....to some there is no such thing as 5 star! It is that perfection that doesn't exist. Most guests just don't understand the way it works and they give reviews like this......

The host can learn absolutely nothing from a review like that, but still gets penalised for it!

And because of the way the review system is structured it is almost useless as a guide to guest or host relevance because, we all pat each other on the back and say what great people we are regardless of the actual experience to avoid getting a poor review.

We see many complaints from hosts about a guest who had 8 five star previous reviews, but turned out to be a disaster of a guest and knew how to manipulate the review system.

In your situation Irma, even your rating doesn't add up, even using Airbnb's maths!!! Your 2 Bed listing has 8 reviews of which 6 have been 5 star, one a 4 and one a 3.

Out of a possible 40 stars you have 37. Thirty seven as a percentage of forty is......... 92. Your overall rating on that listing should be 4.9!   But it is 4.6!

You have a listing which most of your guests love and have given you great reviews so, you are not doing anything wrong, and you won't influence Airbnb to change the review system so, you have to work with it.

This is my method of educating guests as to how it operates. This page is prominent in my House Rules folder, and most guests are shocked when they read it and realise that, by trying to be constructive and help the host, they were actually hurting them......

Don't get too disheartened Irma, we all have to deal with it, just concentrate on being the best host you can be, and let those great written reviews you have do the talking and don't worry about the star ratings.

Cheers........Rob.

[Guy991]

Hello @Irma370 ,

Yes, absolutely, there are guests like this, and for me, they are the most challenging guests. I can handle thieves, but not guests who deliberately don't give us a chance to provide excellent service by not sharing their issues during their stay.

Firstly, thank you, Rob @Robin4 , for sharing your experience with new and intermediate hosts. I will also take some ideas from what you've shared.

I’d like to share an example of a worthless review.

You see, Irma, for some people, home is 4 stars, and 5 stars represent an unattainable perfection that doesn’t exist.

Recently, during the reservation process I've started looking at what guests write to other hosts to better understand their nature. It’s a manual process, but searching for those reviews can reveal a lot. 

One of the ways to identify these difficult guests is through communication. Some of them will avoid communicating because they don't want to lie and say everything is good, yet they feel uncomfortable sharing their issues. So, they stop responding altogether. When this happens, you already know where the review is going, and the best thing you can do is to review the guest and give a low communication score, which clearly highlights their unwillingness to let us succeed.
For example, I once had a guest who stayed for five nights and only mentioned during check-out that there was no cutting board in the kitchen. What a shame! firstly, we had one, but they didn’t find it, and if they had just asked, we could have helped them. This is just one example of the frustrating lack of communication.

For me, and I recognize that this is personal, I don't like the idea of writing a bad review for a guest who left me a good one. This will likely change as I gain more experience, and I will stop caring about this issue. If needed, I can always remove a bad review I wrote to acknowledge the guest's good one.