Guests who don't leave Feedback

I recently had a guest stay at my house for a few days, and he made numerous comments about how great my place was. I had picked him up from the airport (less than 2kms away), and dropped him back there. My town is very small, so doesn’t take long to get anywhere. I went down to the shops - offered him a lift, which he gladly accepted. I permit guests full use of my kitchen, and he bought food to cook a meal. When he was leaving, I asked if he was happy with his stay, and he raved about how great it was - lovely comfy bed, great pillows (asked me where I had got them), and said my little dog was beautifully behaved. His parting words were that he would write up a review when he got back home in a day or 2.
But he didn’t - I sent 2 polite reminders, now it is out of time. This is not the first time this has happened - WHY do guests who appear very happy with their stay - not leave valuable feedback? How do other hosts handle this? You can’t MAKE them write a review, but as I am not in a high volume area, every little bit of feedback is helpful.

As you say, you can’t make guests write a review. In my experience, the guests who tell me that they are going to write a review are the least likely to do so.

My suggestion to you would be to not do special favors for guests if you will resent them not returning the favor.

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Did you actually ask him to leave a review. When my guests say lovely things, I always thank them and ask them if they would mind leaving me a review as it helps future guests know more about me as a host and my home.

I haven’t had any guests whom I have asked who don’t leave a review.

And I agree about not doing special favours. If you want to do airport pick ups and drop off do it as an extra chargeable service.

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First of all, consider this. No review is better than a bad review. There are a lot of reasons why an ‘apparently’ happy guest might not write a review. When a guest spontaneously lets me know that they enjoyed the experience I let them know that positive reviews are important to me and help my status on the website. Sometimes this works. I do not tell (or ask) them more than once.

Because life happens. He’s now had his vacation or business trip and he’s back to reality. It’s not important to him to write a review for you now that he’s back to his day-to-day business. You’re just history to him now. Hopefully he has fond memories of his stay but there’s no reason why he should take the time to help you out.

Some guests leave reviews, others don’t.

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Good advice, I used to feel obliged when guests asked me to drop them off at airport, which is ages away and costs me tolls and then felt a little resentful if they didn’t leave a fab fab review about it or even offer petrol or toll money so I never do it now. I offer to call a cab or help them download uber.

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