My wife and I have been AirBnB hosts for some years now and have Superhost status. Our guest areas occupy the upper floor of our home. For us it has been a great journey as we interact with our guests on a personal level according to their privacy wishes and have met fantastic people. We like to think of our AirBnB as a 'home-from-home' for our guests and our guest responses over the years have mainly reflected that. The majority of our guests have gone to some lengths to write their reviews which frequently contain friendly comments.
The new 'tick box' system apparently used by guests for reviews (we have received two to date) de-personalise the reviews to an extent that is disappointing for me. It invites reviews that lack the space to recall personal memories as it is easier to tick boxes than give thought to what they may have enjoyed - or to pass on constructive tips for improvement.
I suspect that hosts who do not share their home with their guests will not have the same level of interpersonal interaction and this new review system may not be an issue.
I cannot pretend to understand the business case behind AirBnB's decisions on the new review format but I suspect that most business cases are structured around profit and sustainability which in many areas of online businesses depend on head-count AI -backed systems are obviously better at processing tick-boxes than people resources.
Hopefully this is not the beginning of a slippery slope relegating reviews to a set of Emojis!
