Did you see this? Airbnb seeking to help hosts with one off negative reviews and location reviews

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At last!!! - an indication that AirBnB is listening to us. Tracking outliers should be easy enough, especially if the guest can be made aware that the overall rating they’re giving is not congruent with the individual factor ratings. How come we all missed this?

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And a possible end to the pesky location category! Yippee!

I just read that today. I am guardedly optimistic.

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I got it today as well, hopefully there is meaningful change.

RR

It could end up being worse. I can imagine the software working both ways. For example, a guest gave a 5 star overall rating but gave a 3 for location and value, then the software prompts the guest to review whether this is correct. The guest changes the overall rating to a 4 star.

The current system of escalating a bad review for dispute is actually fine IMO. They just need to remove the location rating.

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Are they just changing outliers where the overall rating doesn’t match the individual categories (eg 5 stars every category, 3 stars overall) or are they also looking to remove outlier guests (eg you have 100 5 star reviews, 10 4 star reviews and 1 3 star review- remove the 3 star review)? It wasn’t clear from the article.

Also, I wonder how much of an outlier it has to be in the first instance- for instance, we have about 10% 4 star ratings- and of those, i’d say at least 75% we received 5 stars in every category but 4 stars overall- do you think it would pick up instances like this?

However hosts have raised cases where guests have clearly made a mistake and Airbnb have done nothing. Surely that needs reform.

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Fair questions. Like you I only know what I read in the article. There is much conversation on the Airbnb Community board attached to this article. Maybe there is a piece of information buried there you may find helpful.

This seems good! I, like @CatskillsGrrl, am guardedly optimistic.

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I feel that way too. The Airbnb powers that be are at least giving it thought!!

So let’s say a guest gives you five stars for cleanliness, accuracy, check in, and so on— for each of the sub categories— but then a two-star rating overall. The new tool will flag this and prompt the guest to correct the overall rating.

Well this is a typical tunnel-vision IT solution… if something is wrong we build a complex solution to solve it, with the risk of the solution being worse than the problem, and to introduce only more problems.

They do not have to build a tool, they just have to use proven statistic methods for dealing with outliers: Ignore/Hide the top and bottom X% from the calculations.

They can discuss about the percentage, but 2,5% is a common value.
So if you have 50 reviews, they ignore the lowest one and a 5 star, and divide by 48.

This is a long proven method, so why “invent” something new?

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Excellent suggestion. Some form of statistical analysis and filtering is more useful than a complex IT solution.

And also listen to hosts when we explain the guest has made an error or the review is malicious.

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It’s about time Airbnb got their act together on this!
Just lost my Superhost status because of a single bad review that had to do with noise from another apartment in our building that is undergoing renovation.
No way for Airbnb to remove this negative rating, but at the same time, it seems very easy for them to remove my Superhost status.
An average ratings score should simply leave out the most positive ones and the most negative ones, in order to be representative.

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I would think that any change in this direction is coming ONLY because they are sick and tired about all the calls complaining about these outliers.

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They need to not only have a system to deal with outliers, they also need to respond and take action when hosts call about this problem.

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@Chris. There are several opportunities to make the review process better. This situation is only one of many. People on this forum discussed this one: Guest gives all individual items a 5 star then gives a 2 star for overall—how does that happen? It makes no sense. The 2* should not be allowed to post because it clearly doesn’t fit. Something is a mistake.

I’m glad Airbnb is taking this one into consideration.

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Why? Because some butt-hurt hosts need justice?

If they manage out to filter the odd negative, so it does not influence my rates, I do not need to call AirBnB. And I do not care if the negative was a mistake or malicious.

The only time I called Air about a review was because Air started to send me emails and warnings to close my listing. If they would not have send it, I would not have bothered to call them, because the review was so over the top negative that most guests would have laughed about it.
And guests that would have taken this review serious, are not the kind of guests i want anyway.

A host would object to an unfair review because the low stars take away our superhost and have a material impact on our business, obviously. The comments would also be up for assessment.

I don’t know what prompts your hostility to hosts with your comment. Even if justice were an aim that wouldn’t be a bad thing.