Dealing with Negative Airbnb Reviews

[Beatrice748]

Hello,

I've hosted guests four times on my new Airbnb listing, and previously, I received honest and positive reviews from my tenants. However, during the latest stay, a family from Hong Kong with a child broke the drain system without notifying me during their stay, requiring me to fix it after they checked out during the Chinese New Year period at an extra cost. Additionally, there were multiple sheets with blood and other stains, as well as damage to my white walls, prompting me to repaint them.

I promptly reported these issues to Airbnb and successfully obtained a refund for the damage. Despite this, the guest left a one-star review for everything. Unfortunately, I had already submitted my review before the cleaning lady noticed the damage, resulting in a lower overall rating for my property than intended.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue, and how did you handle it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Beatrice748 You could try calling Airbnb and say the review is retaliatory and ask them to remove it. Its unlikely to work but perhaps worth a try. Pretty much all you can do is reply to the guest's review BUT do it as a message to future guests rather than speaking to the guest who left the review. Something like XX did significant damage to my property and has left this review in retaliation for me claiming damages from him. Please see my other reviews for an honest assessment of this property'

What you do not do is write a long response that further exposes the issues the guest had. Given that your response cannot be removed or edited it may be worth starting with a new listing and closing the current one. The reviews will stay on your account but at least the listing will be 'clean'

[Zheng49]

You can call airbnb support to remove a response that you wrote. 

[Maria19707]

Hi,

Since you submitted a claim, try to call Airbnb and explained the whole situation. They might be able to do something about the review.