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I was typing this as an answer to recent post on how to react to a poor review. But as this seems to be a frequent topic I thought I’d just post it as a topic.
We generally get 5 star reviews, but every now and then we get a poor review. It’s almost always for what to us seems like a silly reason… didn’t like the decor, didn’t like the fact that we live there, looks like the garden took a lot to keep up… saw an ant… was new to Airbnb and hadn’t read the listing etc. etc.
At first they bothered us. However, they eventually get lost in the good reviews and soon become meaningless. Now we go back and read them for entertainment, reminiscing over the crazy “ant lady”.
We have been super hosts for 2 years, and booked frequently.
What I’ve come to realize is that a review says as much about (if not more than) the reviewer as it does about the reviewee.
In the example recently posted about the review for the bathroom door lock, the host didn’t even need to explain here. As a traveler reading that review, I would have completely discounted it.
It’s like when you google a 4.7 star rated restuarant and look at the reviews, and there’s a 1-star review amongst all the 5-star reviews saying… didn’t like the food, didn’t like the beer, service was bad bla bla bla… all you can think of is “what’s wrong with this clown?”
In other words, it’s the totality of the reviews that’s important. If everyone is mentioning the same issue, it’s probably time to take a look at that issue. But after 2 years of hosting (superhost) and 4 years of Airbnb traveling, I give very little credit to one-off outlier reviews.
When you’re just starting out, those poor reviews can tank your business. Especially if, like me, you live in the home and don’t use IB. It’s taken me 9 months (slow here) to recover from 2 people who gave arbitrary bad stars, but left nice feedback. WTF?
Today’s guest will get daily “How’s the stay so far?” questions and upon checkout, will get an explanation about the stars rating and how it can tank a business.
I do like reading the crazy ones here, though. Keep 'em coming!
If you hear the same feedback from a couple guests, time to start paying attention, but most of the one-off bad reviews just sound like irritable people finding things to be irritable about.
This is why hosts should really think twice about replying to reviews. More often than not, you just call attention to the nutter.
I liked how another host put it: Think of your favorite book. Your all-time, hands down, most favorite book. Now go on Amazon and look at the reviews. Even the most loved books, the ones that received Pulitzers or catapulted the author to Nobel prize notoriety, even those have 1* reviews. Opinions are like assholes - everyone has one. And some assholes write opinionated reviews.
Thanks @Emian and @Allison_H, I needed to hear that. I received a poor review a couple months back (and poorly written at that). I’ve tried reading it to figure out what made him unhappy, but then get exhausted by the stream of consciousness, repeat, incoherent writing and just give up. I’ve often thought of sending him a message, sort of a “Hey Dude, you weren’t that great of a guest…” message, and always come back to - it’s better not to say anything at all. Besides, I’m fairly certain that most people with read it the same way I did… “Huh? What is he trying to say?” and then go on to all the other great reviews.
As one experienced host said which has stuck with me till this day, even the best 5 star hotels can still get the occasional bad review. The Airbnb helpdesk said they recognise this problem which is the reason why they put the bar for superhost at 4.8, and not 5.0.
I still get upset at bad reviews though, i guess we are all human.
I have gotten a lot of bad/poor reviews over the last 3.5 years. Most came from people either not reading or reading and ignoring or reading and consciously deciding to go against them anyways and having been called out to pay. I now try to wait until after review to deal with them and it has helped tremendously. In fact…I just happened upon this the other day even though I have many times said I would not likely be a SuperHost any time soon…
