Great. Yeah.
No real message, thanks for letting me vent here.
1 Like
Yes thatâs a real kack off isnât it!! I got 4 for cleanliness one time, and the guest didnât say why when i asked. Sometimes i think they feel like they cant give everything a 5.
(Kack = downer)
It keeps me on my toes though!!
Many of my four-star reviews only give positive written feedback as well. Sometimes even glowing and gushing.
1 Like
The four 
rating is because of the mind set that your listing is not comparable with a 5 hotel and all the luxuries that go with it.
I am sure it the rating was 
the ratings would be easier to get. But the stars are the stick that Airbnb uses to beat hosts down and keep them striving to get that sometimes impossible 5
3 Likes
A lot of hosts are fond of saying this but it is nonsensical. Hotels also get reviewed and hotel guests donât have any trouble distinguishing between the star rating of the hotel and the review rating for the hotel. Five-star hotels donât have 5-star review ratings, 4-star hotels donât have 4-star review ratings, etc. The only people who seem to confuse the two are Airbnb hosts 
2 Likes
You are comparing apples to oranges. Hosts are not âconfusedâ.
Airbnb listing ratings are based solely on the average star ratings given by guests.
Hotelsâ ratings are given by independent organizations like AAA.
Individual reviews and ratings given by hotel guests do not affect that.
When a guest sees that a hotel has a 5 star rating, that is indeed what they might compare their Airbnb to, rather than the ratings given to that hotel by other guests. It is the guests who are confused, not Airbnb hosts.
2 Likes
Iâm not. I understand the difference and so do guests. Airbnb hosts do not get less than a 5-star review because of hotel star ratings. As you said, apples and oranges, which was exactly my point.
I donât know why you insist on believing that just because you understand something as a guest, that all guests do. Hosts have been told by guests who left a 4 star review, when the host asks the guest why, that they were comparing it to a 5 star hotel.
Just because something isnât in your realm of experience doesnât mean it isnât true.
1 Like
As Iâve said before, it is only Airbnbâs punitive attitude towards hosts, warnings about what you need to âimproveâ based on one guestâs fickle rating, threats to delist for ratings in the the low 4s, and the Superhost carrot, that leads hosts to fret about getting a 4 star rating or being upset that their perfect 5 star run got âruinedâ by a less than 5 rating. Iâve actually read posts from hosts who said they cried about it, or lost sleep over it.
Every business, no matter how good, gets occasional less than optimum ratings. The difference is, for most businesses, there isnât a big brother middleman chastizing and threatening them over it. Iâve read 1 star reviews for a French Press glass beaker that the customer gave because the glass broke when they stirred the coffee with a metal spoon, even though the instructions clearly warn not to use metal utensils in the beaker. Downrating a supplier because of what was actually user error is nothing unusual.
Nor, apparently, is saving someoneâs life worth 5 stars. 
3 Likes
From my experience this is not the case. We have a decent chunk of guests who donât seem to understand the 5 star rating system of Airbnb, 5 stars meaning the stay was fine and any other star rating representing an issue which concerns discrepancies in the listing vs. reality, cleanliness, communication etc. etc. AND NOT that the guest was missing golden faucets in the bathroom or the lack of pay-per-view channels or room service (unless it was advertised as such).
Hosts here have reported that they had guests leaving 4 stars because they would never give a 5 star rating âbecause it would be perfectionâ 
I mean, if you get what was advertised - you leave 5 stars. Period.
If you chose an accommodation in a downtown metropolitan area you canât remove a star for too much noise or traffic. Some things just require a functioning brain.
So there are the Airbnb-savvy travellers who leave 5 stars when everything is alright as it should be. And then the ones who feel that 5 stars can only be given if anything spectacular surprises them upon their arrival.
3 Likes
And a third category, which I actually think is the most common- Airbnb gives guests no indication that a 4 star rating is not considered by Airbnb to be a good rating when it comes to hosts, so many guests have no idea that a host would be upset with a 4 star rating when there were, in fact, no issues and the guests were pleased with their accommodations.
This is evident in that plenty of hosts have had guests request to book again after leaving a 4 star review the first time they stayed.
And a super nice guest I had told me exactly that- she had no idea that a 4 star rating on Airbnb wasnât something the host would be pleased with. It wasnât that she was comparing it to a 5 star hotel, or that she never gives 5s because nothing can ever be perfection, she just thought a 5 should be reserved for something really exceptional.
2 Likes
And even this leaves a lot of room for interpretationâŚ
Plus, I also have the impression that some guests also donât understand the importance of rating an accommodation - even when they relied on it during their research. We have returning guests that come about every 3 months and they love our place. They fat-fingered us with 4 stars for cleanliness, not even being aware they did so but itâs the one category that matters the most to us, so guests can be sure that we emphasise on cleanliness of our studio.
To make matters âworseâ the review they wrote was just as brief as it can get 'Everything was fine. We come again". Since they return several times a year they just see no point in writing an essay about what they like in particular and describe their guest experience. If at least they did that it would be more obvious to other guests that there may have been a mistake in the 4 star cleanliness rating.
Obviously these things are outside of our control, so we just have to accept it. Iâm about to give up to figure out if the guests could be somehow guided into leaving valuable reviews without lecturing them about the importance and how they work.
How? As far as Iâm aware, guests do not see the individual star ratings other guests have left, only the averages. So they have no idea which guests left which ratings- they canât connect a rating to a particular review.
I expressed myself poorly again, not explaining it the way I should have.
What I meant is that even when all guests we had so far left a 5 star overall rating, that one time fat-fingering 4 star for cleanliness dragged our cleanliness rating down, showing up as 4.9 for cleanliness while all other categories were 5 stars.
I guess 4.9 is nothing to be ashamed of but when you see a list of categories and the only rating that is not a 5 will still stick out. It was something completely unnecessary and I would have cared less if it was a 4 star Location category rating.
I hope this makes it more clear.
I was also not implying that potential guest were supposed to identify which guest left which category rating. I was merely trying to express that it is always nice and better to have guests write a review that doesnât just consist of âWent wellâ but elaborate on how their check-in experience was, the communication with the host, the consistency of the description matching the actual accommodation etc. That in my opinion provides real value to future guest to get a better understanding of the host and accommodation. Just my 2 Cents.
Maybe tell your frequent flyers itâs fine for them not to review every time going forward, just ignore the Airbnb messaging.
I do gladly take the 5 stars, donât get me wrong. I was just under the impression that especially guests who enjoy coming to the same place would actually understand the importance of the review system which helps us to attract the targeted guests. But as so often, I think of a perfect world.