As an update to this, I decided to do nothing, just leave the review there and not respond. Anyway I made a couple of small updates to my listing, and assumed I won’t be getting bookings for a while.
Next day - I got 2 instant bookings, neither of them mentioning the bad review. So maybe Airbnb has buried it. Thanks Airbnb!
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A lot of hosts seem to think that guests are totally gullible and will believe whatever reviews they read. That simply isn’t so. They can see if a review is a outlier, if a guest is a complaining ranter. They know if you have 25 reviews saying the place was really clean and one that claims it was filthy, that it’s BS.
There’s guests who don’t even read reviews- they look at the location, photos, and the price and book.
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Why don’t you just look to see if the review is there?
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You do not see the big hospitality companies post anything negative about their guests. Believe me they have this down on how to navigate scammers and such.
In my experience once guests have found one thing to complain about it is easier for them to find another, and another. Even though it’s a few years since I had to bother I always took on board guests “suggestions” though hopefully they were relayed privately and some I thought were a bit pernickety but there you go. For every guest who tells you something is wrong there are 10 who don’t. I had some damp in one ceiling living next to the sea but painted over it with damp proof paint. I’m sure it is there underneath but they can’t see it.
As is often said here a poor review is quickly buried by good ones. I sometimes like to click on 1 star reviews for hotels with say 95% 4 or 5 star reviews just to see how deluded some people are and the pass-ag language used by managers replying to say sorry not sorry. Good luck your place seems lovely.
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It’s a badge of honour to have that really bad guest who left that really bad review. They tried to get a refund and you politely told them where to go.
Well, personally I’ve never had a guest who left a bad review or tried to scam a refund. I’ve had nothing but almost all fantastic guests. But there’s a first time for everything.
I have no desire to expose myself to negativity.
Interesting. I’m surprised you are able to successfully run a short term rental business in that case. I’d want to know if the review was still on my account, I wouldn’t just blindly thank Airbnb for doing something if I didn’t even know if they’d done it.