Guest stated that it was not clear to her that I did not have a kitchen

41

For me, not using IB has nothing to do with the “quality” of the guest, or that some hosts don’t leave honest reviews.

I share my home and kitchen with guests, I am out in the countryside a 20 minute walk from town, and I want to dialogue a bit with guests before accepting, to make sure they understand the nature of my place and that they will be a good fit.

I get much more of an idea of the kind of person I am dealing with by messaging with them, than from ratings. I never even look at ratings, I read the written reviews. I also get a heads-up right off the bat as to whether they answer messages promptly.

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42

Hopefully other hosts will write honest reviews for you to read.

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43

I can tell when it’s a real and honest review. I don’t pay attention to reviews that just say things like “Great guest”. Most of the guests I get have reviews from other homeshare hosts who have interaction with their guests.

44

Glad for you that you have the ability to take words and sentences and parse ‘true’ meanings. It is a gift, for sure.

For me, and for I think most people, a review saying the guest was ‘a good guest’ or ‘would host again’ does not have a hidden coded meaning or red flag, suggesting anything other than what is written. Nor should hosts have to have psychic abilities. Being able to take a review at face value should be a given and not require a cheat sheet or an appendix of variables.

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45

That’s not what I said or meant. Don’t put your “interpretation” on what other hosts say.

I don’t “parse true meanings”. I read what is written. If a host says “XX was a great communicator, and kept me up to date when her flight was delayed”, that doesn’t require figuring out some “true meaning”. And it tells me this isn’t a guest who is going to arrive 4 hours later than the ETA she gave without letting me know what’s happening.

I don’t pay attention to reviews that simply say “Good guest” because they don’t give me any real information about the guest. And when that is all a review consists of, and I cross-check reviews, I usually find that is the exact same review the host leaves for all their guests. So all that means to me is that the host is too lazy to give a real, informative review and I have no idea what goes into that host’s assessment of what constitutes a good guest for them.

Most of the guests I get have reviews which are much more informative than that, which are also the kind of reviews I write.

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