This forum is dedicated to connecting hosts with other hosts. Sign up to get the latest updates and news just for AirBnb hosts! Note that we are not affiliated with Airbnb - we are just passionate hosts!
…that most members here would never stay with or predict success for. There are no doubt 1000s of these and they explain why Airbnb doesn’t care about that room in your home you’ve had listed for 10 years. This guy brings more revenue to Airbnb in one month than I have in my entire time with Airbnb.
https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/47848971?profile_type=host
Lol". The review that comes up under his ‘profile’:
"“…Phillip and Yannah were very responsive and helpful. However, the house was much smaller than we anticipated. The beds were super uncomfortable. There were only a few towels and no additional ones to be found. The house smelled really strongly of marijuana. The floors were very dirty and there were lots of bugs hanging out. Although the host and co-host were wonderful, we will not "
Yes, I’m sure he has 100s of terrible reviews…otherwise he wouldn’t have a 4.66 rating. That said, plenty of people continue to stay in his properties.
That this guy and those like him are called hosts, when they just have a property management portfolio, and doubtless have never done anything hands-on in their listings nor met or personally communicated with any guests, is like calling Robert Murdoch a journalist.
I’ll bet he has never even been to any of his 271 listings, except maybe once, to see if it’s a property he wants to take on.
My point is that it doesn’t really matter to him, Airbnb or most his guests. All our head shaking and finger wagging is pissing in the wind. I wouldn’t stay with him and would advise anyone I know to stay away. I think hosts like this make hosts like me look bad. I wish he didn’t exist. That and $5 will get me a small Cafe Americano at $tarbucks. (I think. I don’t know how much their cheapest coffee is.)
Yes, I got your point. So many small-time hosts, when having their first serious issue and trying to deal with CS, are shocked that Airbnb didn’t support them and remove the lying 1 star review from a rule-breaking guest, or whatever.
They don’t realize that Airbnb couldn’t care less if we leave the platform in disgust- there are far more listings than guests to fill them, and there are new hosts signing up every day to take our place.
It also explains why my guest was told, when contacting them to cancel a booking she had trustingly made with one of these corporate “hosts”, who wasn’t responding to any of her messages, that “corporate hosts aren’t required to answer messages”.
Nicely presented, clean, safe, modern, good locations, newer, instabook and easy self-check-in, a bed to lay a head do their thing and move on. Good strong reviews, lots of rental nights, why wouldn’t airbnb want hosts like this? The guy’s a dream for them, he certainly has the product airbnb and their customers are looking for.
For the small hosts, luck plays such a big part in whether you make it or not. I was lucky to get some guests who left me glowing reviews when I started and my hosting business took off.
But I can imagine if I had gotten some of my worst guests early on. I didn’t know how to deal with them early on and would have bad reviews on my profile and would not get any more bookings.
Sooner or later you will get a bad review and bad guests, but if that’s after you have had a successful track record, you can make it.
I’ve stayed in these in Florida – near where I want to be, less than a hotel with a modern kitchen, reasonably priced. Clean, minimal decor, “builders special” basic renovation.
For one place with a misaligned strike plate that made the door difficult to lock and unlock, rapid response and appearance of repair person.
It’s their business and their cost control model to not be proactive in making sure their multiple properties are in a state of perfection, rather to meet minimum cleanliness and amenity standards, and respond to complaints.
No sense wasting our breath complaining about these STR market participants.
Guess you didn’t read very far. While lots of the reviews are great, there are also lots of terrible reviews. Far too many to just be a matter of overly fussy guests or retaliation reviews.
Repeated complaints of the place being extremely dirty, much smaller than it looked on the photos (this is what happens when hosts use those wide angle real estate-type photos), all the decor shown in the photos was gone, broken, non-working stuff, cockroaches, etc. etc.
He has so many listings and so many reviews that I didn’t even read through all of the ones from this month. There were at least a dozen of these awful reviews just from a partial reading of the March '24 reviews.
Most of the properties are 4.8 and above, and it doesn’t appear airbnb is too worried about his reviews with almost 300 properties listed. As I said he’s the ideal host for airbnb in 2024. They can propagandize all they want about the mom & pop hosts but they are a public company now and the bottom line rules them.
Airbnb isn’t worried about the reviews, which they’d be sending mom and pop hosts threats of delisting over, because he brings in so much money for Airbnb.
Do you think that business owners should treat customers who put more money in their pockets differently than those who spend less? Do hosts treat a guest who books for 2 nights differently than a guest who books for 10? Should they? Do you expect to be treated better by store employees because you are purchasing a $50 item than if you are purchasing a $10 item?
Yes, the guests are the customers, but hosts provide the inventory that Airbnb makes its money on.
Guests don’t care how much money a host brings in for Airbnb. They care if the rental is accurate, clean, and fairly priced, and the host is responsive to any issues.
And I suggest that before claiming a host has a good review record, you actually read the written reviews, rather than simply look at the rating. Of course hosts who have 300 properties and 6000 reviews have a better chance of maintaining a higher rating, compared to a host with one listing who gets 4 bookings a month, or accepts longer term bookings, where one 2* review from a bad guest can tank their previous 5* rating.
I think you missed the entire point of this thread.
I said he has good strong reviews. I said this is exactly what the new airbnb wants. The rest of whatever else you came up with is well, that’s what you came up with. As KKC said this is the mom&pop host takes a back seat to these types of hosts that airbnb wants today now more than ever. I’m guessing this guy probably gets some perks mom&pop don’t get either.
Yes, I know, but he doesn’t- he has lots of terrible reviews in addition to the good ones.
He has 6000 reviews and I only read through a partial number of the reviews from just this one month and found a dozen scathing reviews.
Airbnb doesn’t care about his reviews, they only care that he brings them lots of money in guest service fees.
There was a “host” in London, as I recall, who had hundreds, maybe 1000 listings. A ton of them were fake, and he regularly did bait and switch to substandard properties. The guy was a total scammer. Guests had been reporting this guy to Airbnb for years, demanding refunds, leaving terrible reviews. Airbnb only shut him down when it was finally reported on by the press.
So yes, Airbnb is only concerned with their profits and only get rid of these bad corporate hosts if their poor hosting performance and scamming surfaces in the media. Only then do they decide that the bad public PR outweighs the profits.
You know what I’ve always found interesting about the Aibbnb world? The 5-star review and the disproportion between the implied value to the host versus the guest. Airbnb created this false microcosm by how they carrot and sticked the host, while the guest’s expectations were never that high. I see cracks in that old false economy today.
Personally, I find the whole star rating culture to be out-of-control. People these days are asked to rate everything from the haircut they just got to the place that changed their tires. And ratings are pretty much totally subjective. What is acceptable or even wonderful to me might not be to you. Ratings give no concrete information, like written reviews do. I would be happy to see ratings go the way of the dodo.
It’s different when you are talking about Michelin ratings for restaurants, or movie ratings by professional movie reviewers. Michelin ratings are given by professional restaurant reviewers who have a certain set of standards they go by. While they may not all have the same opinions, their ratings are informed by knowledge and experience. That’s quite different from Joe Blow leaving a 3* Airbnb rating because they were an Airbnb newbie and have no idea how the rating system works, or Susie the Princess who was upset that her every desire and demand wasn’t catered to or she spotted one dead ant behind the bathroom door.
Same for the ratings given to guests. What I might consider to be a 5 star guest, you might consider a 3 star guest. Then there’s the hosts who will never leave a bad rating even for a really bad guest, or the corporate hosts who leave 5*s, Great guests! for every single guest. Those ratings and reviews are utterly useless.
Well maybe you’re just trying to be provocative @Notahost . You got me. The reason our guests come to us, is because of the uniquely different nature of our stay, and that they feel like they’re in a real home with a genuine connection to local people. And I only stay in homes that make me feel the same. Bland corporate flips, I can stay in a Marriott with facilities, for that. Can’t say this is for everyone, but to your question ‘who wouldn’t want that?’…. I wouldn’t want that.
Including the recent SNL skit on bland Airbnb designs
I recently hosted a flight attendant. He gets put up in Marriot hotels all over the world by the airline when he’s working. When he goes on his own vacations, he stays in homeshares, and small apartments with character, run by real hosts.
And another recent guest told me she now makes sure places she books aren’t run by corporate hosts, after having her messages ignored by one, and subsequently told by Airbnb, when she called to tell them she wanted to cancel without monetary penalties due to the non-responsive host, that “corporate hosts aren’t required to answer guest messages”.
Just because a guest books from a corporate host doesn’t mean “they want that”. Most guests don’t even look at a host’s profile and have no idea the guy has 300 listings.
that’s funny, I’ve never seen that.
I’m glad there is a guest who seeks out a unique experience and airbnb still provides a platform where a host who gets satisfaction from providing one still exists.
Yeah, rating systems have their good and bad. Amazon is notorious for a high percentage of reviews to be faked. Google has been much better at providing a more truthful platform. Yelp is so damn strange, I had 12 5 star reviews on yelp and yelp would only show 1 of them claiming the rest in so many words were fake. I even sent them evidence of initial customer contact to estimate to invoice to payment on each of the 11 and they said their hands were tied because it’s an automated system. Of course they still called me once a month wanting me to spend money advertising with them. 
You’re 100% right about the written review having more importance at least to me, but I suspect many people just go off the star system based upon how frequently guests don’t read the house rules and so much other basic information in the listing, can’t imagine those sorts of people are reading the reviews either.