I had the same recently …a few five stars (not as many as you …congrats) and then someone ripped into the location …at the end of the day its a good thing, life is full of good and bad …and without the lower scores, complaints, weirdos and all the caca that comes with it I suppose it would not be true to life’s uncanny ability to shake us around just when we thought we had it all sorted
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I think sometimes it’s just a glitch on the app. especially when done on a phone, it’s slow to register. It’s happened to me when rating guests that I’ve hit 4 by mistake. I’ve also had a number of guests who, when I query a 4, say they didn’t mean to do that. Obviously, some are just back-tracking but I believe some of them.
But it’s a pain. Poor you. Galling. One of my first guests gave 5s all through and then 3 overall. The only one ever. They too were new to Airbnb and I can only think they were using hotel ratings.
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We are still novices - approximately 30 hosted, and we’ve received 5 Stars on all but one - Location, from one older gentleman who gave us 4 stars… for location… and said he’d be back in a few months… and what do you know, he came back. The second time he stayed with us he gave us 5 stars for location and also said he’d be back. The wonders of man.
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It’s crazy. We got four stars for value once, even though the first sentence of the review was “The view alone is worth the price of admission!” He got a three-bedroom villa with a pool and staff for a bit over the price of a single hotel room nearby and they were a family of six, with four kids under six years old. I’m guessing his value rating was because our area isn’t cheap.
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Whats in your welcome basket?
I used to be obsessed with 5 stars. Now, not so much.
I have 157 reviews on Airbnb (and another 50 or something on VRBO). Our average is 4.95. What does that even mean? It means that a couple of outliers can bring down the overall score. If you look at anything under 5 as disappointing, then you will be… well, disappointed.
How did I lose points? A couple of examples:
• During the Covid lockdown on Maui, I was essentially limited to renting to local islanders, so we dropped the price by 60%. We had someone give us a 3 for value.
• On days when we have a back-to-back, I also tell departing guests that it would be helpful if they could start the washer if they have time. If not, no problem. We got 3 stars from someone who said, “next thing is they’ll demand that we mop the floor. Makes me reconsider staying at a hotel.” This is especially odd since the hotels in our area charge an average of $900+/night (as of the most recent reporting from the realtor’s association}. We are closer to $350. This is poor value?
Nah, it’s human nature. All of us are not so much in the ‘renting business’ as we are in the ‘people business’. As long as we rent to people, we will have some reviews that make no sense to us but make perfect sense to them. I’ll live with it. It’s better than renting to non-humans.
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I get it from the Dollar store so it’s inexpensive and the min. stay is five nights and usually 4 to 6 guests. I get a bag of popcorn, two bags of potato chips, one bag of pretzels, one tin of cookies, one bag of trail mix, two bags of dried fruit and two king size Hershey chocolate bars.
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That’s a good idea .
I leave a few things like a chocolates and fruit. If I know they’re arriving late and could be hungry, pot noodles.
If I know it’s a special occasion for them, I’ll leave a bottle of wine.
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I started doing it after I stayed in an Airbnb in Sedona, Arizona. I traveled with my daughter and we arrived late Christmas night and everything was closed. We were so hungry.
When we checked into the Airbnb, the host had left us goodies on the kitchen counter, along with a bottle of wine and even orange juice and bagels in the fridge. We were so appreciative.
So now I pay it forward. I’m sure many guests arrive late due to flight delays and cancellations, so it’s nice to have something to tie them over until they can go out for breakfast the next day.
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I leave some kind of breakfast bar and other little snacky sort of thing in the room, right now it’s a small individually wrapped sandwich wafer cookie that Costco had bags of. Sometimes it’s an assortment of Mexican candy or leftovers from the xmas baskets I’m given, LOL. I have a now regular, direct book client who thanked me and said he was having some sort of diabetic episode and the snacks I had really helped him.
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While we always place a little chalkboard with a handwritten personalized welcome message and fresh Sunflowers or Poms as our undocumented welcome amenity, I’m not sure an actual welcome basket with treats would have snagged me that extra star, though.
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Strangely, I did query, just in the platform message thread, the evening after they checked out and we rated them all 5’s and then saw our reward. I sent this:
“Hi. We’re wondering why you rated our cabin a 4 overall. After 19 months and 124 reviews we’ve never received less than 5 stars overall, until today. If there was an issue, we would have appreciated you letting us know so we could address it, and avoid a sub-par rating.”
She read it but never replied. And that’s fine. Maybe this can be a jumping off point for her education about the Airbnb rating system. Maybe she’ll ask friends…
“I gave our hosts a good review and 4 stars, but they seem peeved about it. What gives?”
Friends: “You did WHAT??”
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If there are five stages of grief, I wonder what the five stages of FiveZero Loss are.
And which one are you at?
For grief it’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Maybe we could have a contest here to name the five stages of FiveZero Loss .
You, my friend, are in FiveZero Loss.
But the sun will shine once again, the dog’s tail wag, food regain its taste.
Give it time.
We’re here for you.
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I don’t want guests eating in their bedroom due to insects like ants and cockroaches that are endemic here and will appear in short order if food or crumbs, or even a cookie or candy bar wrapper are left out.
But even though I don’t provide food other than coffee and tea and use of oil and spices, I always ask guests if they are hungry when they arrive, as most fly in and may have had a long journey.
Some say they ate on the plane, but if they admit to being hungry, I’ll prepare a cheese and cracker plate, veggies and dip, or some other snacky stuff for them, as it’s a 10 minute walk to the nearest store and a 20 minute walk to town where the restaurants are.
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Mine’s typically breakfast bars, the little Biscotti packages they serve on planes, the individual (
) cheese & peanut butter crackers- which btw are the biggest hit, & if they’re lucky, fresh peaches or cherries picked that day. The really lucky ones get fresh melon from the garden… If I know it’s a special occasion, I’ll put a fresh bouquet from the garden in their room. No wine! In the off season, they’re not seeing fresh fruit!
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sadly for us 1-2 night hosts, this is not economically viable (i’m in a wine region so leaving a $10 bottle of wine is NOT appropriate, which in australia is barely above cleaning spirits). And surprisingly I’d say 50% of my guests don’t come up here for wine, they come up for the country escape
yes, this is my attitude as well. you’ll be just fine!
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I feel like welcome basket advice deserves its own thread (don’t shoot me if I missed it). We have an open neck glass container that we stuff full of energy bars, small snacks sourced from Costco bulk buy, microwaveable popcorn (never used), sour cream and onion chips (never never used) - & we stock the wet bar with a handful of waters diet cokes etc. For a longer stay or special occasion I do gift a bottle of wine and we had our own labels made for that, with a pic of the airbnb. I must admit I never considered the impact if someone was getting sober.
I too think this small act of generosity conveys that the hosts care personally about your stay, also makes bad actors aware that you’re invested & will be attentive to trouble; always results in better behaved guests and usually they leave us something in return. Sometimes a bike, a cooler, but mostly hummus.
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I’ve received some 4 star reviews for location.
I don’t understand at all. They chose the location so why are penalizing us for their poor choice of location lol
The rating is based on this below, which might not have been immediately obvious to the guest when booking, or even relevant, or what your listing says it offers. I think the problem is the way that Airbnb asks the guest the question, as if these are the criteria (beautiful surroundings, private, great restaurants, peaceful, walkable, lots to do and ‘something else’):
For more of the questions asked the guest in the review, see @Lynick4442 's post here,
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I do understand it in many cases. If a listing ad states that the place is a 10 minute walk to the beach, and that is accurate, of course it’s ludicrous for a guest to mark down because they would have preferred to be 10 steps off the beach.
But guests can’t know ahead of time if there are other things about the location that made it undesirable- maybe a sketchy area of town where they feel unsafe to walk alone, a houseful of Harley riders 4 doors down that roar past the house, broken sidewalks that make it difficult to walk, etc.
While there is nothing a host can do about things like that, and it doesn’t relate to the accommodation itself or the host, I can understand that if given a category of “location” to rate, guests would assume, in the absence of explanation that it only relates to the property itself, that it includes the entire area.
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