Well konacocoutz, you’re in Haiaii, you’ll always get dinged on location!! Really??
So do I and I think our location is perfect. (Not Hawaii though). There’s a very good reason why I have lived in this apartment for 14 years and on this street (just yards away) for ten years before that. Because (to me) it’s wonderful. But I get dinged too.
I’m bringing up an old thread here…but the location thing is really irking me. We had someone comment in their review about how safe they felt and what a wonderful neighborhood we are in - then gave us 4 stars for location. I think people interpret this 2 different ways (maybe more). Either they’re rating how they feel about the location - safety, noise, etc. Or they’re rating how close the particular location is to whatever particular attraction they’re coming to attend. In the case of this person, she chose our location and then had to drive 20 minutes to where she was going. Our ad even says exactly how long it takes to get from our home to this particular place. But I think in her mind she was thinking that our home, while safe and 5 stars on all other counts, would have been better if it were located nearer her destination.
It doesn’t really matter - our star rating for location is still like 4.8 stars. But I do think Air could be a little clearer about what this metric actually means.
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We’ve received 4 stars on location twice of our nine reviews. We have one of the most amazing views from our place (postcard-perfect), are at the top of a hill surrounded by forest (shown in a drone picture), and only a 5-20 minute drive from beaches, snorkeling, a grocery, restaurants, diving, hiking, mountain biking… the list goes on and on. One person gave us four stars and didn’t say why (I think it’s because the road is rough), and another gave us four stars because “the town is not as close as I wanted it to be to the town I wanted to spend some time in”. WTH?? I can’t fold the earth to make the drive between our town and that town shorter!
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I feel your pain. I get a lot of the same complaint, that we aren’t close enough to whatever attraction the guest wants to see each day. Maybe Airbnb needs to remind guests that we can’t move our house every night to be close to where they want to go the next day.
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It should just be an opinion rating and not be used to mark you down overall
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I got a 4 star once due to not enough streetlights. They thought it was a bit dark. Our town is trying to stop light pollution.
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It’s always interesting (well, sometimes…) to see old threads/subjects resurrected. I stand by what I said last year: it’s an important metric and one that I look for as a guest. Yes, it sucks if you are not in the centre/hub of your area but you know that already so you have to sell yourself on other things. ALL the metrics are subjective, not just location.
Location is my lowest rating for all the reasons discussed. It does seem like since I put reference to my location in the listing title it’s helped a little. I’m not going to go back and search through all my review stars to try and confirm though.
Sigh - still being dinged on location…they arrived without a car and it is my fault that we don’t have Uber and Taxi’s were too expensive AND i didn’t supply bloody chopsticks!!!
Why not? They are about $2.00 for a set of 12. Standard issues in these parts. You might also consider Chinese soup spoons.
Über and taxis are outside your control.
Snap! My place is about half way between Phillip Island and Melbourne and at the beginning when I took 1 nighters I’d get people giving me 3 or 4 stars for location presumably because it was 50km from the Penguins at PI they were visiting in the evening before coming here. Also there are no shops, pubs or cafes for 10km. My place has an awesome sea view with great sunsets but because they got here 2 hours after dark they didn’t get to see any of that.
Location is supposed to mean: is the Location description accurate, not is there a view of the Eiffel Tower from the balcony. But Air doesn’t seem inclined to make that known. So my solution is
(1) I only take guests for a minimum of 2 nights so they get to experience the area and
(2) include the fact that is quiet and isolated in the listing as a feature and also mention (for the third) time that the nearest shop is 10km away in the arrival message I send.
(3) in my guest pack I have a detailed description of the history and the locale so they can feel what it is like to live here and things to do.This includes printing out some googleview maps with walks marked on them. I also mention the various trees which flower at different times of year and the birds and other animals which visit in season. I think that helps them to feel they are 'somewhere" rather than “nowhere”.
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I have people from Singapore who find the 2km driveway from the highway a bit scary because they have never driven anywhere that doesn’t have streetlights. They mentioned it in the review even though there is a street light outside my next door neighbours.
And a view of the Eiffel Tower at night.
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There is a new booking site in Australia just started called HolidayWithDogs.com.au. I get about 75% of my bookings from people with dogs through Air. They’ve told me that even when a place is listed as “pet friendly” the first thing they are told is that the dog has to stay outside or if it is a holiday trailer park stay inside and cannot be left alone. I don’t think they really understand dogs and their people.
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I replaced all my early IKEA furniture with stuff bought off Ebay. It is amazing what people will sell you for very little rather than throw it away.
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What if your town is very small so there is no center [I was once driving in Provence and we stopped in a small town and asked a man “Où est le centre-ville monsieur?” (“where is the town center?”) He stood up, looked around and replied: “Ce n’est pas Paris madame, c’est le centre-ville” (“this is not Paris, this *is* the centre of town”). I don’t speak much French but even I knew what he meant].
So they are really commenting that they think your beautiful isolated quiet country town (because that is what country towns usually are by definition unless you are in Disneyland) should be closer to somewhere more exciting or have some bars or a cinema that they can hang out in even though this is a feature in the listing, not a bug.
Sometimes when I ask guests from the city what their plans are for the weekend they say “oh nothing really, we just want to hang out here and relax and do nothing, just chill and enjoy the view”. Then an hour later I see them drive off to the place about 30km away where there are cafes and shops.
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Oooh, I wish this would come to the US. @Emily would be interested.
When I started with Airbnb I tried to get people to book themselves with me and their dogs on DogVacay (the site I did dog boarding on). It was cumbersome and impractical. I charge a nominal amount for dogs but if people would be willing to pay more and in exchange I’d care for their dog while they were away for the day or out eating that would be ideal.
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I would definitely book that and have never seen it advertised, maybe I’ll visit Airbnb when I’m in the states and give them my feedback!
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Quoting myself and resurrecting the thread (a double whammy) … I’ve changed my mind!
The location rating really is crap. I just got 3* for location because it is exactly where I state it is and it takes exactly the amount of time that I indicate to get to the centre. Twats. They still gave me 5* overall so it’s not a major deal but the private comments on location really grated. I mean, you can SEE the location on a bloody map before you even choose to book ffs!! Why choose a place that is CLEARLY not in the city centre, shown not just on the map but stated in the listing itself, and then complain about it afterwards?
I have hundreds of reviews and location is consistently scored lower than everything else and I’ve always been ok with that. But these recent comments have made me realise that it’s pretty stupid. My place is where it is. That is it’s “Location”. Nothing going to change in that respect. So what’s the point in rating it?
I was thinking maybe it should be renamed ‘Neighbourhood’ or ‘Locale’ or something. But that opens up a whole other can of worms.
It should be scrapped, basically. My conclusion:
If guests are too stupid/lazy to work out where they are booking then they shouldn’t get the chance to criticise.
If the host does not describe their location and neighbourhood fairly then they can be penalised on Accuracy.
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