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Newbie here. Insta book off. Almost ALL of my requests have no review history. One didn’t even have ID on file with AirBnB. I try to get some dialog going… most have pretty good groups (couples or families for a 3-bedroom apartment) and a decent reason for their trip. (Visiting, vacation or trip.) Photos may not be too great. Should I accept them?
It would be so nice to have well reviewed guests! Maybe the reason that I’m not getting them is because I’m a new host without many reviews myself?
That’s definitely one of the reasons. Another is that there are so many people trying Airbnb that most guests these days have very few, if any, reviews. If I remember rightly, I think I had only one or two guests with reviews all last year. And then it would be just one or two reviews at the most.
So many of them had profile images of flowers, buildings, their kids, their pets …
It seems that this is a fact of life on Airbnb these days.
Hi. Like you say, you can’t really expect well-reviewed guests when you can’t offer the same as a host, right? Honestly, it’s all a bit of a leap of faith on both sides. It’s good that you get some dialogue going, that’s the only way to get comfortable when you’re starting out.
Many hosts put a lot of store on photos. Personally, I don’t. Only about 10% of my guests look anything like their profile photo. I wouldn’t put all your faith in guest reviews either, I’m afraid to say. Two reasons for saying this:
they may have stayed at a place where they didn’t meet the host. OK, there were no problems but if you host in-home, they might not fit.
in my experience, frequent airbnb guests with good reviews can get a bit complacent. They think they know everything, compare you to previous stays and don’t think your rules apply to them because they’re special experienced airbnb-ers. Not all of them behave like this, obviously! I just want to stress that newbies are sometimes your best guests, on their best behaviour etc.,
Most new guests are great. I accept them constantly. You shouldn’t worry.
I have some guests without reviews and their dates of joining Air show they are new so I always send a friendly message telling them are welcome to book, we would be delighted to host them and advise them to read the house rules to make sure the house is suitable for them. That is one of the biggest issues for us as we host in an old restored cottage and want to make sure we only have respectful guests; so long as we know they have read the rules we are comfortable to take, what is,we feel a fairly small risk. We would not take anyone who was not verified, in fact I didn’t think you could be on Air without verification. So far this approach has worked well for us, we have a group of young Canadians staying in our cottage at the moment and they seem to love it and the surrounding beauty of the West of Ireland (we live in a different house nearby), they are leaving tomorrow, so hopefully after check out (which I have extended at their request) will still be saying positive things!
Hi designrs, I started 6 months ago. I too get lots of guests request with no reviews, most turn out to be very good, and the rest not good but still acceptable. I also accept all guests with good reviews and it works well until my lastest guest. The guest had 2 or three positive reviews and she acted perfectly until she burnt my quilt and dryer and refused to take responsibility, refused to respond to messages (refused communication completely).
So my lesson is good reviews are not guaranteed peace of mind, because she could turn out to be a good guest again if her daughter didn’t vomit on my bedding. But now, she is a really bad guest to me.
I believe you should review guest requests carefully but you should take them if nothing seems wrong to you. You can’t be 100% protected against bad guests, but I believe most of your guests will be good, even great.
New guests are just as nervous as new hosts. It makes them both better I think 