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I noticed that listings are now showing the individual stars left by a guest along with the written review. It is allowing me to sort by positive and negative reviews. As a guest, I find this helpful to quickly find critical reviews of a listing I am considering booking.
The AirReview plugin hasn’t worked for me in a few years, but this could also be handy for researching upcoming guests. I would find it useful to know if a guest has a history of leaving less than 5 stars, as some guests who leave 3-4 star reviews will only write positive feedback.
Anyone else seeing this new feature? I’m using Chrome on a PC. Don’t see it on the mobile app or mobile web browser.
I think that’s a great improvement. It can make it evident whether a host or guest has a 4* rating because most of their guests or hosts rated low, or whether they actually had all 5* ratings until some jerk tanked it with a 1* review that Airbnb refused to remove.
That there was no way of knowing that, other than trying to figure it out from the written reviews, has always seemed like a major flaw to me.
I’ll check later to see if I see it from my account. I also use Chrome on PC, but I know Airbnb rolls out new features at different times depending on location.
Back when they started to hide guest photos before booking confirmations, I was still shown guest photos for 2 weeks after hosts in other places said they were hidden.
Yeah, I think everyone got an invite to Chesky’s pre-recorded zoom call going over all the things they’re changing/improving and this was one improvement that he demonstrated.
I thought I had read about someone getting an invite on this forum.
Anyway, I can’t even remember any of the improvements except this one, since it’s live.
Agreed! I want to know when guests leave low star reviews and now all hosts can see that info…along with the private comments that only other hosts can see.
This has helped me dodge a few bullets already, though it would be nice if the hosts had just left an honest main review, seeing that a guest did not respect house rules in those hidden sub-comments is a welcome addition to the platform.
The are on the listing reviews, not guest reviews. The star is at the top, and now there is also, like Yelp, a search feature added where you can enter “lowest ratings” and all the lowest starred reviews will show up, so it’s currently mostly a new guest search tool.
But can still be a great new tool for hosts to avoid problematic guests, (though you will still have to go onto the listing page the guest reviewed to see the stars, hopefully that will update soon where it’s right next to the guest’s review on AirReview). I would never accept a reservation from a guest who left a low-star rating for a host.
Just like Air Review has helped hosts see past reviews guests have written before accepting a reservation, the stars will give hosts more control over who they accept as guests, so hopefully they show up on AirReview soon.
I think anything that helps hosts avoid problematic guests is a good thing, and also that can show, like you said, that a host has almost al five stars except that one clown who left them a low rating rather than just the overall rating number of the listing.
AirReview and this new star thing would have saved me a lot of problems, money, stress, time, effort, etc. if they had existed when I first started.
Some hosts deserve the low star ratings they are given. And we should want guests to give those listings low ratings, so hopefully those hosts, who give Airbnb a bad name, will go out of business.
I wouldn’t reject a guest just because they left a low star rating unless I looked at that host’s other reviews. If it was an outlier among lots of great reviews, or I saw that the guest was a serial low rater, sure, but to think all good guests only give 5* ratings isn’t the reality, nor should it be. I’d never automatically assume a guest was undesireable just because they gave a low rating to some host- maybe the place really was dirty, or the host really was rude and unresponsive to issues. If we want other hosts to be honest in the ratings and reviews of guests, we have also want guests to feel free to be honest.
If guests just started rating every place 5*s, because they heard that hosts will decline them if they don’t, then all the listing ratings would be pointless.
And there are still no individual star ratings showing up for me.
There are some great hosts but sadly there are also hosts who are either deliberately sloppy or simply don’t have a clue about the hospitality business.
I’ve stayed with hosts like that and I’ve written factual reviews and given stars to reflect that review.
Luckily I always use IB as a host and as a guest but it’s weird to think that if I sent a request, I might be refused because of the 100% factual reviews and low stars.
"And we’ve redesigned the ratings page, adding new features to help guests understand the quality of every home.
You can opt in to Early Access to start using these upgrades or wait for them to roll out to all Hosts in the coming months."
As with most of their updates, the techies are experimenting, which is why they are appearing and disappearing, I assume.
I wouldn’t advise opting into Early Access just to see the star ratings, as their new updates always seem to be glitchy (several hosts reported issues with their accounts when they opting in to Early Access the last time)- they are essentially using hosts as guinea pigs while they work out the kinks. It’s not just a matter of the star ratings showing being glitchy- the updates usually involve coding errors that affect other things on one’s hosting pages while they work on it.
It is gone for me too! I am glad I’m not the only one who saw it and I wish I’d taken a screenshot.
I spent about an hour browsing my local listings’ reviews as well . I was surprised how many three star reviews had only positive things said in the public feedback.
