I just tweeted the question to @airbnbhelp. We’ll see if I get a reply. As you all know, some of the CS are pretty clueless!
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Got my reply seconds after I reviewed my wonderful host and clicked that my expectations were met. Darn! I hope I didn’t hurt my guest’s listing whenever this data is used for something.
Feel free to find my tweet to retweet if you feel so moved. I just blocked my name to keep it off this forum.
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I wonder if they are getting pushback from all the five-star reviews. People book a $29 a night place with 5 star reviews, and then are really disappointed that it isn’t a luxury hotel - after all, it got five stars, right?
I see this as another way to push prices down. People pay a lot for our home, they expect a lot, they get a lot, but they are very, very happy. Their expectations are met. But if I cut the price in half, they’d expect a lot less, and then their stay would exceed expectations.
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I thought this was the new wording for the “Overall” rating, not a totally new question. Does anyone know for sure?
They ought to get fewer 5* reviews by asking the question in this way. It’s also a big incentive to hosts to underpromise in the listing and leave more of the listings’ delights for guests’ arrival.
Good surprises = “Much better than expected”
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This was my first thought. I’ve always argued against professional photography, for example, because I want our places to look better in ‘real life’ than they do in the listing. I don’t describe extras in the listing either.
With the advent of Plus, I was beginning to doubt my theory - should I get new photographs and use better descriptions in order to compete with these ‘super-properties’?
Now, I’m getting mixed messages and have no clue…
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ABB replied to my follow-up question with a platitude about how they ensure Superhosts are the highest of quality. It wasn’t useful so we didn’t screenshot it.
I can take away that AirBnB is now asking us to undersell and over-deliver. If the CS agent is right (who knows, it’s so hard not to get a canned answer), it WILL hurt us to manage expectations and meet those are expectations.
I feel awful I didn’t check “exceeded expectations” in my review yesterday. Did I just give a wonderful, experienced host the new equivalent of a 3-star review?
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My thoughts exactly. My recent stay was great, as expected. So what I am afraid of is that if I hit the ‘as expected’ button it means a 3 overall… so I ended up not reweing. And therefore I understand why fewer guests review (my experience this season).
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That has been my experience too. My own mom didn’t review us until she asked me about it bc she wasn’t sure what they were looking for. If family and hosts are questioning it, I can only imagine what a guest must wonder.
Mom also said there were quite other questions and it was pretty tedious, when all she wanted to do was write a good review and pick stars, like she had done in the past.
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I can’t see this as an improvement, for exactly the reasons @Xena describes. I too would think carefully before ticking the ‘much better than expected’, unless it really was, and that’s unlikely: I do my research, and I’m delighted to have my very high expectations met. This is only going to detract from the high end places and reward places that weren’t as bad as you feared they were going to be.
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Oh bother, is this some ghastly staff level interpretation of the Brian Chesky “6 star experience” etc. remarks?
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And that should be a choice also “Not as bad as I feared it would be.” Haha just some morosely dark humor here. Sigh.
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This must be one of the most fatuous things I’ve seen on Airbnb (and there have been quite a few …) I agree with @helengray, I do my research carefully, I choose somewhere with great photos, an informative listing, a reasonable price and good communication with the host. If I get all these, what on earth does the poor host have to do for me to write that it was “much better than I expected?”
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Hi Everyone. I just posted screen shots of the whole new review that Guests see (I think it’s complete)
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Wow, @LCL! I would never let my mother review me. I can just hear her. “I didn’t want five stars to go to your head.” 
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I exchanged a few more tweets with CS this morning, and they basically said the Superhost has to still go above and beyond my high expectations. It was disappointing, and I think we should raise a ruckus.
I’d be happy to PM my twitter thread to anyone wants to retweet (I don’t want to post my real name here so I’m not sharing the link). I encourage you all to use social media to complain as well.
@LCL what reason would you use the AirBnB platform to host your mother other than to farm more positive reviews? If you charge family to stay, why not just have them pay you directly and save both the fees?
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My mom booked with a bunch of her friends. She chose to do that because of the group dynamics. Not my business to ask her why.
And as for “farming” - no, I have had four family groups stay and only one has reviewed us. The rest have booked direct through me, or just visited.
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Haha, I agree! I think that was the review that I was the most worried about, especially when she told me that she put all these suggestions in the private message part and then said “At least I hope I put it in the private part, not the public part… I was confused.” Oh boy!
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As I thought, since the old review system has created an inflation of superhost one must now get rid of that by asking guests vague questions which have a huge impact if not answered ‘correctly’. Well, since the guests end up not revewing anyway, many will not reach the limit of 50%. So byebye SH. Easy. And if many enough hit the 3 (as expected) then byebye platform as well. Darwinism or something I suppose.
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I think this is an excellent psychological discussion. We all want our experience to exceed our expectations, don’t we?
For example, my kitchen, which guests are free to use, is always full of old, empty tins and bottles. So a couple of years ago, I took pictures of my flat, myself, including this clutter in my kitchen. So fellow hosts - it might even have been on this very forum, here - remarked that this looks pretty messy, and guests wouldn’t want to see these kind of pictures.
So when the professional Airbnb photographer came to my house, last year, he took great pictures, omitting all the clutter. Sure enough, soon the first set of reviews came in, with guests complaining that the pictures did not depict the real state of my flat. Those flawless pictures created an expectation of cleanliness which simply is not there.
So I was wondering if I should dump those professional pictures and use the old ones, again, in order not to create this rift between guests’ expectations and the “real thing”.
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I deleted my professional photos from the AirBnB photographer and replaced them with ones I took. My conversation rate is at 3% right now so I don’t think it has hurt my bookings to have crappier photos.
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