Fake Airbnb reviews in my area, how to tackle this issue?

41

@jaquo I have to disagree, at least in the short-term, re: “I really don’t see how fake reviews are going to affect me.”

I do take your point that fake reviews are everywhere, but AirBNB is VERY proud of its supposedly genuine reviews.

Further, commercial investors who are buying and swapping fake reviews get a profound market advantage on the little guys and the honest guys, who either haven’t figured out the AirBNB review scams or just don’t think it’s right to rig their reviews.

Another point –

Buying and swapping fake reviews is often a tell of other malfeasance. Certain investor hosts are apparently obtaining fraudulent VA loans, and fraudulent primary residence loans, to obtain new properties and promptly make them into short-term rentals, against the terms of their low-rate loans, which require that the property is their primary residence.

Again this hurts the honest folks (at least short term) since these investors are getting sweet deals that allow them to undercut the rest of us on nightly rates.

But … you and others may have a point regarding that in the long term, the fake reviews ultimately hurt more than help the fraudsters.

Long term … if / when the fraudulent investors get caught … well, VA loan fraud is a federal offense … and the fraudsters, well, they might land in prison.

So paradoxically, by cheating on their reviews, which CAN be detected (try it in your area sometime), fraudulent commercial investors draw attention to themselves and open themselves up for more scrutiny, and set the stage for their own demise, since they are involved generally in multiple scams that involve serious penalties.

Meanwhile the honest hosts can sleep better at night.

I still see fake AirBNB reviews as a profound short-term problem and one that could really hurt the platform.

42

I do not my best to ignore reviews, however the mega rants do amuse me, they seem to have no idea how it looks to potential guests.

Anybody with friends or family with an account can set up a few good reviews to get them started, does not cost much, think the minimum is $10 a booking so 10 reviews would be $20 or so.

43

actually Kona, a long time ago, I saw an article that mentioned a memo that was being circulated by the hotel industry, I’m not sure if its still there, sometimes they take those down, but it might be up somewhere.

the lady was from a hotel, and she outlined airbnb hosts as threats. and she enumerated ways that various hotels could use to take out hosts in a particular area.

she recommended hiring secret shoppers, or secret guests, to go to airbnb’s and outline building code flaws, write reports on each address, host and weaknesses. she said you can take them out one by one this way. she felt that the reviews were the key, to distributing the weaknesses which could be used by other guests who book, who would see the hosts vulnerabilities and then pick them to reiterate.

She said that you do this so many times, and you can cripple an airbnb. She said those elements would also be used to turn over to building inspection departments etc, tax offices, to target an airbnb in a hotel area, where a hotel manager, would be impacted.

And actually we did have that happen in our community, someone was reporting airbnb’s but it was a host, that wanted to take out competition in an area, and they used the same tactics, as all were on the list if I remember correctly.

But the guests, go through building code issues, weaknesses in a listing. They get comped for their stay, and paid by review. They think its a highly effective tactic. I wish I would have kept that memo, but you can probably search for it.