(As very basic background I have 2 glamping units at the same location, been hosting over 4 years)
I’ve recently had 2 low star reviews with people noting “issues” with our listings.
One is for it being noisy - I know that, it’s near to a main road that is noisy during the daytime - it states that in the listing I’ve ticked the box that says it’s subject to noise, and when booking I’ve set the pre-conditions for the guest to acknowledge that they accept it can be noisy at times before they make the booking.
Second is another guest who complained about the lack of privacy simply because the shower unit is shared between the two places - I’ve explicitly state this twice in the listing description, it’s stated on the photo of the shower unit and in an email that gets send out a couple of days before people arrive.
I’ve now had an email from Airbnb saying that our listing is at risk of suspension or removal because of these two reported issues. All because 2 guests couldn’t read the description properly. I host around 500 guests a year and get mostly 5 star reviews. How is it fair that 2 lower rate reviews in hundreds could prompt a warning of a suspension for things that guests have very clearly been warned about before booking?!! Airbnb say I should make improvements, but these are both things that are well described and understood by the vast majority of guests, and neither of them I could do anything about anyway - it’s not like I can ask Highways to close the road!!
I totally understand the need to keep standards up, but that just seems very draconian. Not everything is the fault of the host. If I did get suspended it does say I can appeal, but having tried to deal with big companies on issues like this before I wouldn’t hold out much hope that they would even read any appeal, let alone act on it.
Hopefully it’s just a warning to make poorly behaved hosts take notice, but it’s my sole source of income and makes me feel very uneasy. I work very hard to keep standards up.
