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I’m afraid I agree that your reviews are telling you something, which is that there may be cat odors of some type in your space that you are unaware of. This can happen to the best of us. We get very “nose-blind” to smells in our own homes because our noses become accustomed to them and filter them out. So no matter how neutral your home smells to you, it may not smell that way to outsiders.
Ask a trusted friend or relative who isn’t in your home often to come in and give an objective sniff test. We have 2 indoor only cats. My sister is all too happy, LOL, to give me an objective opinion when she’s here. Due to her nose and my obsessive cleaning, we’re yet to get a negative comment about our cats.
As far as useful suggestions, the lidded litter boxes do help, as does keeping the litter box as far away from any areas accessed by guests as possible, and scooping it 3 times a day. I also sprinkle the litter with plain old baking soda after every scoop. Baking soda is great at absorbing odors in the air. I’d also maybe try replacing the charcoal with bowls of baking soda.
Also, if at all possible, I think you’d do a lot better with a dehumidifier instead of the Damp-Rid. You’d be astonished at the amount of moisture a dehumidifier can pull out of the air.
If you’re getting multiple reviews from people who have never met and didn’t stay with you at the same time… all mentioning the same problem - it’s most likely that there is a problem. You should listen to them and bring somebody else in to check it out to make sure you’re not missing an odor.
The thing about reviews is - sure, you’ll get the occasional crotchety review from a grumpy guest, but you’re not going to get FIVE reviews all with the same complaint if there’s not something to it.
In all of our 3-star or less reviews (all three of them), no one has mentioned the same problem. They’ve all had different issues. And the issues they mentioned - no one else has ever mentioned! So, that’s how we know there’s not really a problem. In some of our four-star reviews, people have mentioned the same things, so we know those things are in fact problems. Those people didn’t know each other, so we know they couldn’t have conspired with each other to purposely hurt us with their reviews! Therefore, we know the things they mentioned are real problems for some guests. Some of the things we can’t do a thing about so we just make sure we mentioned them in our listing. Other things we can and have done something about.
I know we all hate bad reviews, but I’ve learned to be most successful, you have to respect the reviews. You can write off the single oddball review. But you have to respect the reviews when more than one person says the same thing.
A good many of my guests mention the location as being further than they wanted, even though that information is stated a million different ways on my listing.
