How many of your guests leave reviews?

21

I review all, normally, so I would say a solid 90% - the remaining 10% I just didnt know what to write.

22

That’s a lot of people Julie who do not seem interested in knowing the review left of them. Thanks for sharing.

Anyone’s thoughts on this please. I am only referring to first time Air users AND when host leaves the review first:

  1. Is guest hesitant to leave a review because they don’t know what is on the other side of the curtain? Maybe they are initially surprised to learn review is hidden for 14 days so they would rather leave nothing than feel stupid for leaving a nice review…only to find out host complained about them.

  2. Like Kirsty mentioned…guest may never intend to use the service again.

  3. Guest doesn’t want to leave a review because they want to return. I have had a couple of guests from other listing sites jokingly say they don’t want to leave a review because more people will know about it…they want to keep it their little secret. Plus, the more reviews, likely a fuller calendar and price increases.

  4. Guest was less than impressed about something but raved about place to host’s face.

With all these newbies not seeming to care about being bad guests, bringing extra people, not following rules, etc. - it makes me wonder if people could really care less what hosts think of them.

23

I think they just don’t take it seriously - I mean, a lot of hosts let them in just for the money. When a host has bad reviews he wont get bookings unless he is ridiculously cheap. If a guest has bad reviews it may not affect him.

24

Funny. Just yesterday I told a guest I’d be leaving him a good review and why that was good for him. He was a great guest, but had a really thin profile with no reviews. I pointed out that the first thing any host does is check a potential guest’s profile, and if it’s too thin, may decide not to accept them. We took a chance on him because his initial inquiry gave us plenty of information that was all quite reasonable and believable. Normally I don’t do anything other than confirm that I’ll be leaving a good review, if it happens to come up in the farewell conversation.

25

I don’t know for sure but my guesses are:

I believe guests aren’t as invested in reviews. They don’t have much to lose or gain from it like we as hosts–future business. As hosts, we put in a lot of effort to earn those stars. Guests pay the money expect a service and that is the end of it.

Another idea is as “customers” we are used to reviewing businesses but not the reverse where a business reviews a customer. At least in the U.S. the old adage “the customer is always right” is very ingrained in our heads.

Can you imagine a yelp version for customers? "Don’t let person: ___ into your establishment, they are x, y, z.

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26

I am just baffled as to why a guest is not in the least bit curious to find out what a review of them says. I guess I am in the minority of people who wouldn’t be able to wait 14 days to find out…lol.

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