Review character limit is bad for long-term / extended-stay hosts

[Katie---Sean0]

We only host long-term extended stays -- minimum 60-days. Our guests usually stay in our two furnished cottages for 2 to 6 months, sometimes as long as a year. 

Prior to March 2023 review length was unlimited. Then a 1000-character limit was implemented, which is bad for those hosting long-term stays.

Simply -- guests who stay for a long time legitimately have a lot to say -- that is very helpful to future guests. It's a different market and experience than the STR market. 

We only found out about the new restriction after recent guests  wrote a review describing things from their 3-month stay, that they felt future long-stay guests would want to know. Then they discovered... they must cut 75% of it out. Their review was still great, but they apologized for the brevity and lack of detail. 

Yesterday I warned guests checking out tomorrow about the new character limit. They replied they've already written a lengthy, detailed review. So now they're equally frustrated they will have to cut most of it short. They also felt it important to describe their long-term stay to our future guests.

I totally understand the reason for the limit -- short is good when it comes to short-term-rentals. It's enough.  But for guests considering long-term stays -- well, they do actually want to read lengthier reviews, and they appreciate having more details.

I've read multiple news stories about Airbnb wanting to welcome more long-term hosts. But changes like this are not friendly to our business, and become yet another reason we continue to reconsider where else we can find long-term guests outside of Airbnb.

I hope somebody from Airbnb sees this --

Please make the team who made this decision, aware of the negative impact on long-term hosts.

An ideal solution if possible -- would be that the character restriction is lifted for views over a certain length, say 14-nights, for example. 

Thank you. 

[Fred13]

The problem may lie on how does Airbnb implement a different cap for an STR vs. LTR stay? How do they even tell the difference between the two when hosts are changing back and forth? Long 'War & Peace' length reviews oftentimes are also an opportunity for long rants that don't do anyone any favors.

[Katie---Sean0]

@Fred13I hear what you are saying about long reviews not being useful, when they are nothing more than an unhelpful rant. This can happen whether a stay is long or short.

Airbnb already considers stays over 30-days to be "long term" – they have a "long term cancellation policy" that is different to the usual cancellation policy.

So I'm suggesting Airbnb perhaps use the same criteria – stays over 30-days could be given either more characters – or no character limit.

This is because – when a guest stays for 3 months, 1000 characters isn't enough to explain to other potential guests all of the things about a property, that they are looking to find out.

[Mike-And-Jane0]

@Katie---Sean0 1000 characters is a huge amount of space. Guests (or hosts) needing more than this are likely to be just repeating what is stated in the listings. Also just think of the environment effect of storing millions of excessively long reviews. 

[Katie---Sean0]

@Mike-And-Jane0-- 1000 characters is not actually that much text. 1000 words is much more text... but the limited is 1000 characters, not words.

In our 5-year experience of hosting long-stays, we have noticed that what other guests describe in their review is... to put it delicately... perhaps a little more reliable, than what is stated in a listing description.

[Fred13]

Got cha. I could see that what they have to say for a long stay is quite different than just a few days. Long good reviews can be great advertising. I got a wild idea, imagine if the logarithm allows them space to write according to how many stars the guest is leaving: If 5 you are allowed 2000 words, 4- 1000, 3-100, 2 -20 and if 1-0. 😎

[Katie---Sean0]

@Fred13lol that's an awesome thought I love it 😆

[Frances3408]

@Fred13. Fred, I do like your idea of linking longer length and review stars although I once gave a guest a 1 star review and rounded it off with an unhappy emoji only. Apparently that might not be considered helpful by some other hosts 😉

[Katie---Sean0]

Oh one star and  an unhappy emoji would speak volumes 😆

[Marlon165]

Hello! At one point in life I was an aspiring software engineer. Although I discovered coding is absolutely not for me, a simple boolean script (basically a true/false, on/off, or yes/no command) being added would perform exactly what you are suggesting. As you pointed out, the platform already has the ability to discern between long-term and short-term stays. Adding such functionality would be a pretty simple task. (Even for a crappy coder like myself lol)

I have been doing long-term stays for over a year straight now, and it is wonderful having detailed reviews; especially for digital nomads and the like.

Cheers!

[Paula]

Hello @Katie---Sean0 Thanks for sharing this with our Community.

I thought it might be helpful to share with you the link where you can send your 👉 feedback directly to Airbnb.

[Katie---Sean0]

@Paulathanks for responding -- we already shared this feedback directly with Airbnb perhaps a month ago. Nothing has changed. All reviews are still limited to 1000 characters, which seems fine for Short Term Rentals, but is not ideal for long-stays where guests will naturally have more useful info and feedback to share with other potential guests.

[Joakim28]

Couldn't agree more... Stayed 2 months in a condo in bkk this year and I written an 3600 letters review that I need to cut alot... And unfortnually I need to cut out parts that is to the hosts + and detail whats lacking (for example I like to cook but it wasnt really good because lack of equipment and needed to buy alot of stuff and no hot water to do the dishes...)

[Frances3408]

@Katie---Sean0. HI Katie and Sean. Although I dont do LTR through Airbnb I think you have a valid point.

I am wondering if Airbnb were to allow a separate section, maybe called GUEST REGISTRY REVIEWS and allow these longer reviews to sit there. It already allows "see more" so that could be a hyperlink rather than expansion (I'm not a programmer but seems logical-maybe @Marlon165 knows the difference).

I note the reviews now show "More than a week" so they could start there.

[Katie---Sean0]

@Frances3408 good thought – and yes I'd also just noticed in the last few days, that reviews now appear to show some indication of the length of stay. I still think it would be great if stays over a certain number of days (30-nights perhaps?) could be allowed more characters for the review. There's just so much more to say about a long-stay that future guests really want to know about. Although as you mentioned in another reply here... sometimes just the appropriate emoji speaks volumes 😳🤷‍♀️😆