I just had a guest instant book for a property that I co-host. On this property the IB setting is set so that people with poor reviews can’t book, so I was very surprised to see that she has only one review with a 3 star rating average. Cleanliness is 1 star, house rules is 3 stars, and communication is 5 stars. Then the review reads “X was a delight to host! She were (sic) communicative and respectful of the property.” 1 star for cleanliness and she was a delight??? How might you handle this? Reach out to the host and see what the issues were? If so, I am not sure how to do that without creating an inquiry for his property. Should I ask her about it and get give her a chance to explain? She is booked and the primary host/owner wants to keep the booking, so there is no going back there. How might I politely head off issues before they happen?
I would just go over check out procedures with the guest the day before they check out. I would write something like “It was a pleasure hosting you and we hope you enjoyed your stay. Before you check out tomorrow please take out trash, empty fridge, unload dishwasher and gather used towels. Our cleaning team will be arriving shortly after your 11 AM checkout.” Some newbies need a gentle reminder of what is expected. Hope it goes well.
I like what @Ritz3 had to say.
I think I’d:
o Reach out to that Host (yes, with an inquiry far in future) and explain situation, ask what the cleanliness and house rules’ issues were.
o Use AirDNA to read the guest’s review, if any.
o If it’s OK with the Host, I would adopt @jacquo’s suggestion elsewhere here to ask the guest about that last review, with the ‘1’ in cleanliness and ‘3’ in house rules. Something simple like ’ I noticed your last review with a ‘1’ in cleanliness and ‘3’ in house rules. What happened there?’
Then I’d quickly move on say that your confirmation message highlights the key rules and something that [lightly] follows up on whatever the guest had to say about cleanliness. The guest will get the message.
o Send a confirmation message to this guest, summarizing your key rules, something like [edit]:
Dear short code start
[guest first name]short code end
We’re delighted that you have confirmed your reservation here.
We look forward to hosting you starting at 4 pm on short code start
[check-in date]short code end
; your check-out is by 10 am on short code start
[checkout date]short code end
Your reservation is for short code start
[number of guests]short code end
and you understand:
o Home is suitable for non-smokers (no smoking inside or outside),
o Unless otherwise agreed only for children age 12 and over
o No animals.
o Maximum occupancy, whether overnight or not, is six and, unless otherwise agreed, limited to registered guests.
o Kindly, no shoes to be worn inside the house.
o The person making the reservation must be 25 or over, and must be staying throughout the reservation: no third party bookings.
o No parties (outside quiet time per city noise ordinance is 9 pm - 8 am; inside 10 pm - 8 am)
o Full list of rules in the listing.
Please do not hesitate to let us know if there is anything we can do to make your stay here more enjoyable. We want your stay here to be comfortable and pleasant. Please tell us how we can help make this happen. For example, are there events or activities that you’d like us to research or recommend? [No charge.]
If you have not installed the Airbnb app on your phone, we recommend that you do so, and enable notifications. You’ll find the app a convenient way to communicate and hold information about your stay.
You’ll receive a detailed pre-check -in message on the day of your arrival at 3 pm [check-in info is in the app earlier]. We look forward to hosting you!
Name
That seems like an AirBnB glitch. I thought I gave a poor review (mostly three star and less) to a guest, but it showed up as a five-star across the board with words that sounded three star. I have no idea how my ratings got changed. Maybe I went back a screen during the review process and that reset everything to five stars.
I sometimes read posts from hosts that ask about what sort of review to leave for some guests who left the place looking like a cyclone went through it, but saying they are conflicted about leaving a bad review because the guests were “really nice”.
I don’t know how anyone considers guests who leave the place a mess “really nice”, but I know there are hosts who leave deservedly low stars for guests because the guests can’t see how you rated them, but leave a glowing review so the guests won’t be offended or message the host outraged about a bad written review. I find it cowardly and wish they wouldn’t do that.
It’s obviously confusing for other hosts.
I’m a little perplexed that the only method by which you can contact the host you co-host for is on the platform. No email or phone number? I think that’s something I’d correct right away.
You made a key distinction awhile ago here.
You said the Host is not rating the guest as a person, but as a guest, for that stay.
That was an ‘Aha!’ for me.
I think many Hosts truly wish to be hospitable, to be nice. In our personal life [but this is our business life] some of us might tend not to say anything if we don’t have anything nice to say.
But hosting is different.
It’s our business life.
And we have a responsibility both to our fellow Hosts and to our guests.
Our fellow Hosts deserve to know exactly how a guest fell short (since that Host might not care much about the particular shortfall that you cared about). And the guest needs accountability, both to be acknowledged for their good guest conduct, and called out specifically when they fall short. By being matter-of-fact and balanced we can do this in a nice way.
Finally, when a guest falls materially short, we as Hosts IMHO need to think if there’s an opportunity for us to do better in how we communicate. Hosts here have recently commented how when they’ve been traveling as guests that the listings can run together in a way that they might not remember all the particulars of a given listing.
Sometimes we need to decide what we should let go.
So I agree with you.
She was referring to contacting the prior Host whose stars didn’t match the words of the review.
Not the Host she’s co-Host for.
Um, yeah. That actually makes sense. Sorry. I just rolled in from hours on Reddit…
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
AirDNA? They also offer the service?
If not they can try this:
Oops. I meant AirReview.
There isn’t any setting like that anymore, as far as I’m aware. The only IB setting now says the guest has to have a “good track record” and no negative incidents, or something like that.
But nowhere is it explained what that is based on. “Good track record” might mean reviews that are 3 stars or above.
You mention it to the guest during the meet & greet and house tour.
ask them what the problem was and give them a chance to explain.
Once they have, say ‘that’s great to hear because we’re really strict here about noise after 10 [or whatever the perceived misdemeanor was] so I’m sure you’ll remember to be thoughtful here’.
Remember too that there are some really picky hosts who’ll mark guests down for a bit of mascara on a pillowcase, or not being talkative or a broken teacup or not taking the trash out…
At the other end of the scale there are hosts whose reviews are always nice. Guests were always lovely, never a problem at all.
The review system would be great if only hosts were more honest.
One thing that would make the review system better is if they showed the number of each star reviews instead of just averaging them, like they do on other sites, like Amazon.
If you see that a guest or host has 10 reviews and 9 of them are 5 star and one is 1 star, you might chalk it up to the reviewer who left 1 star either being one of those hosts who mark guests down for minor things that most hosts would consider no big deal, or a guest who left low star ratings as revenge.
Whereas just seeing what would be a 4.6 rating over 10 reviews doesn’t give you any insight like that.
Vrbo doesn’t quite do what Amazon does, but at least you can sort by number of stars high-low or low-high and the review words go with the review stars. So it’s easy to see who was unhappy/disappointed and why, and when a 3 or 4 star review reads more like a 5-star review.
Yes, not being able to match up written reviews to the ratings makes Airbnb’s system flawed, IMO.
The other day I was looking for replacement beakers for French presses and it was helpful to see that the 1 star reviews were mostly because the reviewer was clueless. Like they complained that the beaker shattered when they stuck a metal spoon in it, or knocked it against something. Well, duh, what did they expect- those glass beakers are fragile.
I saw one the other day on a product on Amazon. The purchaser had to choose the colour from a drop down when ordering - black or cream,
One reviewer gave the product one star because ‘it isn’t white - it’s cream’.
Er…
Yeah, for the 4-star we got last week, I really wanted to post a reply on their review, that read something to the effect of:
“This lovely person was our 124th review. As you can see, her words are very positive. You can therefore imagine our surprise when she gave us 4 stars overall, our first-ever, less-than-5-stars review, even though she had no complaints and no communications with us during her stay and wrote a really lovely note in our coffee-table guest book. So she is the reason our overall rating is now 4.99. It’ll take 78 5-star reviews in a row to get our average back to 5.0. Even though our review of her was positive, and we said we’d be happy to have her back, we no longer feel that way. Oh, yeah, almost forgot: this was her first Airbnb stay! Yay!”
Well, the fact that Airbnb tells guests that 4 stars means Good makes me not fault guests who do this too much. If Airbnb explained 5 stars as “Lived up to the advertising” or something like that, it would be easier to fault the guests.
I have never had less than a 5 star review, but I’m sure I would have gotten a 4 star from a lovely guest I had, who I just happened to get into an Airbnb review discussion with one day over coffee. We were talking about Airbnb in general, and I mentioned that hosts are expected to maintain at least a 4.7 average and lose Superhost status below 4.8 and she was shocked.
She said she had been leaving 4 stars overall for past stays she was happy with and where she would book again. She had no idea that hosts wouldn’t be pleased with a 4, because she was just following Airbnb’s designation of it meaning Good, thinking that 5 stars would mean it was something really exceptional.
So glad you didn’t because if read that reply I’d avoid staying with you for fear that you were a bit unhinged.