Even if they did humans are subjective by nature. So if Airbnb said “this is the standard!” and guest still mis-rated we’d be even more frustrated. They can and should remove location as rating. Guests should only be allow to rate location if the host has misrepresented it. Some hosts don’t accurate pin on the map for example or they move guests to a different apartment last minute. But if my listing information is accurate then it’s automatically 5 stars.
that’s a good point - i guess it would always come back to being a subjective evaluation. Totally agree on removing location. We had a guy give us a “3” for location because we didn’t have hip/cool restaurants etc. near our home. But he gave us a “5” for accuracy because we accurately described on our listing that our home didn’t have hip/cool restaurants etc. near our house! Those 3’s are hard to overcome.
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My most painful rating was the accidental 1 star overall. The review that went with it was glowing but she hit the wrong star or something. I asked her to call Airbnb to see if she could correct it but they told her no. She booked the return trip here as well and I made it clear she needed to be careful when doing the review.
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How about 666? - hopefully around next Halloween time!
That would be fun. Also quite within my normal time range.
I cannot do that, that would end up in a divorce…
I am on the opposite site of the spectrum.
We have all kind of guest from all different cultures and nationalities.
All have their own wishes and expectations, and you can never be 5 stars for all of them.
We are well over 600 reviews with a rating moving up and down between 4.7 and 4.8 depending on the season.
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OUCH! Gotta love it when you get a glowing review, 5 stars all around and then a 4 star overall. I think we’ve had three of those. I typically reach out to the guest to see if there is something we are unaware of that perhaps we can address with future guests in mind. Our last guest that did this said they had a hard time sleeping because they felt a “malevolent spirit” in the guesthouse! (and you stayed four nights anyway?) Guess we will have to call Ghost Busters!
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Congrats, @Hampton!!!
What an inspiring post! We’re approaching our 300th review. We’ve had approx. 413 stays with approx. 333 unique guests. Approx. 20% of our stays were returning guests. We’ve been hosting collectively for about 3.5 years since 2014, but needed to take our listing down for a while when our condo assoc. sent us a cease-and-desist letter. We bought our house in 2016 and have been hosting continually since.
We’re also relatively close to a large metropolitan area, Boston, and is a source of some of 4 stars for location, a place we don’t even pretend to be close to. Frankly, they’ve all be Millennial guests who failed to read a map properly. A couple older folks, too, but they realized their error and gave us 5 stars for location, anyway. One 4-star location was for the roads. I don’t know WTF people think hosts can do about roads.
We’ve learned more about our community by the composition of people who’ve stayed with us. We live in small (43k+) post-industrial, gritty city, plagued with blighted buildings, homelessness, and a growing opioid crisis. When people find out we’re hosts, they’re absolutely amazed we’re even this busy (100+ guests/yr), and mildly concerned why people are coming here. I tell them our guests are people like them, and they get even more confused. It’s fun to watch their expressions.
About 2/3 of guests are business travelers, and we never thought there’d be so many. The rest are a mix of parents visiting their kids at nearby private schools, the local university has given us some guests (surprisingly few), people traveling through the area, and the occasional vacationer looking to stay somewhere “different.” We’re also near a small ski mountain, so we get some carryover guests from there.
I kind of read this mean there’s room for some interpretation. Obviously, things like no smoking and no pets are pretty black-and-white. But we have a no-later-than-x check-in time, but we set it an hour earlier than we’re absolutely sure we don’t want guests checking in so we can appear more accommodating. But we don’t want to micromanage our guests, so we have a limited number of rules.
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You also have multiple rooms an and if I were running that with only one partner to help I too would
I usually take 2 or 3 days off a month but I’ve been in a very unusual situation for me. I’ve had or have coming up 4 multi day bookings. Because I haven’t had to clean every day, it’s been like days off. And the people coming through on one night stays have been perfect: arrive late and leave early.
Yeah, it was them. 
Write back and tell them after they stayed you had it smudged, feng shuied and blessed to get rid of their bad juju.
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Congrats! I too, have met some of the most interesting and friendly people! I now have a best friend and she lives in Berlin. I live in L os Angeles. I have even been to visit her. I am up to about 390 reviews. I also keep a guest book in the room for my guests to sign. It lets me know I’m doing things right! Another favorite thing to do is put their city up on a wall. They love seeing it when they are far from home
j
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Your post could be a promo for Airbnb!! I started hosting in 201; an early adopter I think. I offer a room in my house but only host about 5-7 nights a month so as not to be overwhelmed. I do not know how many nights I have hosted I also do a lot of one night hosting.
I could not be as eloquent as you were in this post but I do have similar feelings about this endeavor. I feel I am following the original, stated intent of airbnb, to share my house, be a trusting host, invite the traveling stranger to my town and maybe even make a friend.
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I don’t know what year that is. You can look at your listing number at the end of your URL and get an idea by how many digits it has.
I like your “wall of city names” - we started off with a map but certain areas got too jumbled up! We’ve had guests from all but 4 states and 16 countries. We now have friends around the world! We have a “rescue farm” that is a big hit with our guests and one of our rescues, “Rosie” (bethlehem donkey) has her “own” Instagram account and a good many of our guests follow her. Through that account, we get to stay connected to so many of our guests. Thanks for the idea, and we may have to steal it.
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Opps - that was a typo. I meant to type 2013. I believe I have 320 reviews last time I checked. I have been hosting for a long time but only 5-7 nights a month.
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First, CONGRATS!!! What a milestone and what a beautiful home you have. These kind of reviews make me so angry. I have been a Superhost for almost 2 years. I don’t host a lot because my children still come home from college from time to time, so I block a lot of dates when they’re home. Recently, one Guest left me 5-stars on every category and an overall “3” and the Guest right before him gave me an overall “1!” These two, back-to-back, brought my rating down to a 4.6 with only 2 weeks left until the next review period. It stinks when you go above and beyond to be a great host and one guest kills your perfect review status. The Guest with the 3-stars said the bed was uncomfortable. Had he communicated that to me, I would have switched his room. Mind you, I have twin beds in Guest room with pillowtop covers on mattresses but maybe if you are 6’7" tall and weigh 300 pounds you might want to consider that fact before booking last minute for a twin bed–at a stay of $35.00/night. What irritates me is that I left him a 5-star review 
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What an inspirational story! Thank you for sharing!..
Your “Globe Trotter” collage is to cool!!
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Good for you! I have been hosting for just 2 years and have over 200 reviews. A lot of my guests do not leave reviews, so I commend you for getting so many. I have been a SUPERHOST every quarter that I have been eligible. And like you, I only have a tiny fraction of guests that were “trouble”. I am thrilled with the Airbnb platform and the income I have been able to generate and people I have met
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