Always nice to be remembered!
(BTW, I remember you, too, and if I hadn’t, your “moderate” comment most surely would have reminded me.)
I was surprised when a guest left me a four star review. When I asked why, she said, “a professor that I respect never gives out an A to his students. That’s because he feels that students can always try a little harder and do better.” Turns out she had just graduated from college and she thought she had given me a wonderful review.
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Grrrrr. A score should always be a measurement against a standard established in advance. Not a target that is always out of reach no matter how much mastery one demonstrates. Sadly there are too many of those “professors” out there.
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Screw that. It’s so stupid. I had those professors and still got an A. And I absolutely expect my 5-stars too.
If not a single student is making an A, then that reflects on your teaching. Same thing with Airbnbs. Hosts either get 5 stars (predominantly) or they sink, so of course most listings will be close to a 5 star rating and not a 4.
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The ratings skew on Airbnb comes from it’s home sharing roots. Many of the problems I see come from a clash of “old school home sharing” vs “new Airbnb hotel culture”.
Hotels’ five-star scale is well-established. If I asked you to imagine a hotel stay, and I compared it to my own, we would probably describe similar expectations, from the layout of the hotel room to the number of towels and how the key card works. Your rating of “generic hotel room A” to my stars given to “generic hotel room B” have meaning because we’re comparing similar things.
Airbnb’s model is totally different. How do you have a rating system on a platform where you can find literal castles alongside tree houses and tents?
If you stay in a grass hut on the beach in Costa Rica for $19/night and I stay at a luxury high-rise overlooking Central Park in NYC for $1500, how do you compare those two stays?
The only way to do so is: DID I GET THE EXPERIENCE THE HOST DESCRIBED IN THEIR LISTING? If they hit all the marks, I’m giving them 5*.
The rating inflation was also caused by social pressure because you’re staying in someone’s home. Scoring lower feels like saying “my life is better than your life. Your life is actually a little shabby.” Hotels don’t have feelings like that.
This is why reviews are so high on Airbnb. Normally a researcher would look at the bell-curve of results and set their thresholds for excellence (or failure) at +/- some standard deviation from the mean. With everyone scoring so high, that curve is really narrow and suddenly 4.7 is “average”.
This is where the problem comes in. Airbnb rather shortsightedly set these as standards. People react to what they’re incentivized by, so of course hosts get pissed when a 4* becomes “failure”, because it defies logic. They’d do better to implement a Yes/No score, similar to how we’re asked if we’d host a guest again.
That’s my professional data scientist, survey builder take, at least 
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Just my 2 cents on this -No and No (Sorry this is a bit off topic)
Bottle of wine - you don’t know the guest’s issues, what if they are recovering alcoholics? Do you have a business license - if so, would providing alcohol be considered an unpermitted activity? What if the guest lied and is under 21? What if the guest decides the wine isn’t “good enough” and it backfires in the review as the host was being cheap in providing substandard wine…the “what ifs” can just keep going.
Homemade cake/homemade any food item – are you regulated by the Health Department and meet ALL of their standards? What if the guest claims you made them sick, will your insurance cover it?
Granted these considerations may be location specific regarding local laws. I encourage people to know their local laws before having a problem.
Back to the 4 *s. Unfortunatly some people will never give 5 *s on the stating that “nothing is perfect”. No amount of going above and beyond will change their minds.
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IGMS,
Disagree 100%. The answer is not a pep talk for us to "do more and more and HOPE for 5 stars.
**Allison_H summed it perfectly: **
Did I get the Experience the Host Described in the Listing? YES = 5 STARS.
This should be the standard set TO THE GUESTS by AirBnB.
They have failed to do so. Now, we politely reinforce the PROPER EXPECTATIONS to Our Guests, on the front cover of our Guidebook.
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I do agree here!!!
It’s brilliant. And reveals the fundamental flaw in the system.
Well, that’s how I’m interpreting it anyway 
Unless generic room A is a 2-star hotel and generic room B is a 4-star hotel, then room B has a clear advantage.
The other thing that complicates our Airbnb reviews is that even for hotels it is not a straight-forward thing now that everything is reviewed all of the time. There are stars and then there are stars. When a hotel is referred to as 2-star hotel or 4-star hotel, it is a class rating, it has nothing to do with reviews. Hotels have been star-rated since at least the 1950s and those stars are based on amenities, services, entertainment options, resort options and even location. For instance, to be a 4-Star hotel you must offer room service but to be a 5-star hotel, you must offer 24-hour room service (and a concierge) but a 1-star hotel doesn’t even have to provide a TV or telephone.
However, now that everything is rated on the internet and “stars” are the popular way to rate, it really complicates things. Combine that with a generation of travelers who haven’t known life without internet review ratings and it gets really screwed up. I’ve seen numerous discussions about it on the internet: “The Ritz-Carlton was supposed to be a 5-star hotel but I’m only giving it 3-stars because that lobby person was so rude to me.” No, the Ritz is still a 5-star hotel, you’re giving it a 3-star customer rating and that is completely different. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be a hotel manager these days 
In the google hotel engine, they note the star classification directly above the guest star rating.
I’m not sure if it helps or hurts but I also can’t help but wonder if some of these guests at this 1-Star hotel (above) thought they were really giving it a boost by rating it 4-stars 
Just the fact that this 1-star hotel, 2-star hotel and 3-star hotel are all rated as 4-stars can’t be helping with all of the issues of the Airbnb star-rating system.
My point is that this history of classifying hotels by stars so to easily navigate for amenities and services when looking for a hotel is yet another issue that impacts our Airbnb star ratings too. I have seen discussions and screenshot reviews of people saying, “it was so basic and only had 2 towels each, there’s no way it can be 5-stars”.
Maybe it would be easier if it was just a number grade for customer ratings and the stars were left out completely.
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I’m just going to wear a helmet and eat a bunch of kale and hope for the best!!!
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This is by far the most accurate, wonderful description of the issues around the ratings that I’ve seen so far and couldn’t agree more. The rating system is completely subjective with no basis of what standards are being measured. I have multiple rooms in my home that are rented and despite everyone sharing the same conditions of the house, I receive reviews from guests that vary from 3 stars to 5 stars during the same time period of staying and it does more to represent the type of guest than it does the condition of my home. How can one guest claim the place to be spotless with 5 stars and the other guest saying it is “cozy and comfortable” while giving 3 stars? It is because there is no standard measurement of “clean” and everyone’s perception differs, sometimes dramatically. If I were to say, draw me a black cat, or imagine a black cat; everyone’s image of a black cat would be different even though each one is a black cat. Airbnb seems to promote guests being critical by supplying so many additional standards to judge a home for while hosts are given only 3 categories and must also suffer indignant reviews from guests that have broken house rules or those that feel that it is important to criticize every aspect of a home despite how the conditions and settings of the home are described. I completely subscribe to the belief that the ratings should be based on what was described in the listing. Whenever I receive less than 5 stars I ask guests to provide me a reason why so I can know what to improve. I have also had guests refer to their professors never giving 100% score so neither do they, however through the follow-up communication about reviews they apologized for it and stated they understood better for the future. There are no real guidelines for anyone to follow, and until some are made or the system is changed to more accurately represent the premise for each listing then it will remain a subjective review process that can potentially create a false pretense for the conditions of a home, tent, or castle.
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Maybe you should describe the lack of cleanliness better.
Just kidding, though you probably aren’t in the mood right now. I think having people in your home, and multiple rooms at that has to be a phenomenal challenge. I started out listing the guest room down the hall. After about 1.5 years I added onto my home to make a separate entrance. The guests no longer enter my part of the home. When I hosted in my home I often got 4s on cleanliness (never a 3 but I only had one room). Now I have gotten two 4s in 3 years. One due to ants and one due to a mosquito bite in the room.
You are in a tough situation.
I have described the home as lived in, and list it as being not perfectly clean in every aspect of the house and that routine cleaning occurs once a week and there is no cleaning fee charges for the stay. My experience is that the majority of people do not read and others do not care about the description because no matter what, it is only 3 stars in their opinion, even though they say they thoroughly enjoyed their stay. Someone elses comment about the differences about hotel star ratings on the basis of what is provided versus customer star ratings based on exprerience accurately describes the problem with the rating system which I find to be unfair and subjective. No matter how accurately i describe my place and what to expect, people will still put whatever they want based on their own interpretation and choice of measures. It also leads to the question of whether hosts even want a guest to return if they are only going to give 3 stars which will continue to drop a rating for this system.
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Hi Jefferson, I’m afraid there is not really too much we can do about that. Maybe explaining the system would help, however some people just don’t give 5 star ratings unless the place is like a Hyatt Regency. In their minds a 5 star rating means that everything is perfect and likely unable to be improved upon, therefore a 4 star review is above average and 3 stars is average. I think in the long run though it all works out and you will be fine. Just don’t get too hung up on the ratings because you really can’t control what people write and it can drive you crazy if you dwell on it too much. While it is true, if you are trying to become or maintain Superhost status it may be important too you, otherwise it doesn’t really matter that much.
I send guests a message the day before checkout and thank them for being five star guests (subliminal message). Then I hope they really were five star guests.
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There is simply no point in a 5-star rating system where a 4-star rating is a “ding.” It’s like grade inflation. “Everything was as I expected from the listing, neither better nor worse.” should be THREE stars. Four should be for above and beyond, five for the truly special.
It should also have nothing to do with any of the features / amenities of the listing. Those should be reflected in the price. I don’t ding a “dive” if I BOOKED a dive for $20/night, and I don’t rave about a palace if I booked a palace for $1,000/night.
In my job, I hire a lot of very smart people. But it’s a constant struggle to assess academic records when some schools (Stanford, for example) hand out high grades to all students, and others actually grade using 5 letters of the alphabet. I know that the best schools do get better students overall than the lesser ones do, but I KNOW that. If the Ivy League and the Community colleges all graded their students on a relative basis, then I would know enough to rate an Ivy League 3.5 GPA above a Community College 3.5 GPA. It’s the same here – if every listing in the market is between 4.5 and 5.0 stars, what use is the rating system to Guests?
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This is a key point, anything old = dirty to a youngun !
I’m not sure they consider it dirty, as may of them have rather poor housekeeping standards themselves, but they do equate old with “shabby” and undesirable.
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This reminds me of one of David Walliams’ characters on Little Britain. 
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