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Advertising your business isn’t allowed here.
What you are saying here makes no sense. You can’t “intercept” a negative review a guest has submitted.
And experienced hosts do not normally have a hard time anticipating if a guest is going to leave a bad review.
I hear you, but actually you can. There’s a gap between when a guest leaves and when they get the email from Airbnb. If you had your own private feedback channel it gives you time to contact the guest as most will just tell you everything was all good and in most cases they will be happy but if they’re not, the only way to raise it without being confrontational is to leave a public review.
And what happens when ABB does their usual site tnkeri g/ updates/ stuff ups……? I can see this being an instant fail……
Haha yes they love changing things with no reason or notice.
It’s not connected to Airbnb in anyway.
Current journey - Guest stays at your property. Leaves your property, sent email from Airbnb how was your stay, you hope it’s 5 stars.
HomeHost journey - Guest stays at your property. Before leaving you prompt them to scan the QR code you have placed wherever you want, giving the guest a chance to leave feedback that only comes direct to you, good and bad. If it’s good, great you know your getting a 5 star review, if it’s not, you contact them before they receive the review email from Airbnb giving you a window to address the issues the guest had.
Most people, not just on Airbnb, hotels, restaurants etc just want to vent, the unhappy ones I mean, why else would they think it’s OK to publically slate local independent businesses and Airbnb owners trying make some money? It’s because no one likes confrontation and the current review system is set up to fail for owners and hosts as there is no middle ground and or control.
This feedback is genuinely great so please do let me know if you disagree, and or do not have this problem with your guests in the past.
I have no idea how often you have been an Airbnb guest. you get multiple reminders about a review and the wording asks the guest how can the host do better. They put a powerful axe in the hands of a guest that thinks they can expect/ demand perfection. I get all the demands for reviews from every product I buy extraordinarily annoying. I dont need and extra layer between me and the guest.
If the guest is venting, did the host fail in some way?
12 year host - 5 listings 4.9 star rating. Airbnb is my second last reservation source
Fair points Deb and thank you for your feedback. Congratulations on your record. Your right Airbnb does give many prompts, but again there is no interception method for those few guests who either are genuinely not satisfied or want to try and push for a refund. That’s the target.
As I said, a host generally has a sense of whether a guest is going to leave a bad review. And a scammer, or a guest who likes to complain about trivial things, etc., is not going to be headed off from leaving a bad review, regardless of you messaging them. In fact, it could lead them to get nastier.
And many hosts already send after check-out messages, to all guests, thanking them for staying, and saying if there is anything they think could be improved, to please message back with suggestions.
In other words, all this can be done through the Airbnb platform.
The vast majority of negative reviews that are not well-deserved by bad hosts are done by scammers, which this HomeHost thing would have no effect with.
I’ve been hosting for almost 10 years and have never gotten a negative review or a scammer.
And hosts are far too obsessed with and terrified of a bad review anyway.
This isn’t true. A guest can always message a host privately on the platform to leave feedback. And a guest who doesn’t raise an issue during a stay but intends to leave a bad review, is not likely to raise it privately by scanning QR code.
This just seems like another thing someone thought up to make $ off of hosts that they thought hosts need, when they don’t.
Thanks for the honest pushback, this is exactly the kind of feedback I needed.
You are right that scammers are a different problem entirely and HomeHost does not claim to solve that. It is aimed at something narrower: the guest who had a genuinely off experience, said nothing at checkout because the social pressure of saying so was too high, then went home and left an honest review. That gap between the checkout smile and the review is what I built it for.
The Airbnb message channel point is fair. Technically you can ask for feedback through the platform. The difference I found is that guests behave differently when the channel feels private and separate from Airbnb itself. An anonymous QR code in the property lowers the social cost of saying something felt off in a way a message from the host through the app does not. Whether that matters enough to be worth a separate tool is a fair question.
Ten years with no negative reviews is genuinely impressive and I suspect you are doing a lot of these things instinctively already. You are probably not who I built this for. I built it for the host who does not yet have that instinct, or who is scaling and cannot personally read every guest the way a single experienced host can.
Fair point on the private messaging. The option exists, you are right. The behavioural difference I have seen is that messaging the host directly through Airbnb still feels confrontational to many guests because you can respond and argue. A separate anonymous form lowers that barrier for some people. Whether that is worth a dedicated tool is a reasonable thing to disagree on.
On the QR code point, you are partially right. A guest who has already decided to leave a bad review is not going to scan anything. That is not who this is built for. It is for the guest who is mildly unhappy and might leave 3 stars unless the host catches it during or right after the stay. Not every guest, not every situation.
I am not going to convince you it is something you need. You have 10 years and a clean record, which suggests you are already doing most of this instinctively. I appreciate you pushing back properly, it has genuinely sharpened how I explain what this does.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond properly rather than just dismissing it.
Okay, @MrSmith, lets say a guest found the mattress to be too firm for them, and the neighbors to be noisy, and whoever cleaned the place before their arrival hadn’t done a great job- it wasn’t filthy or anything, but there was stuff in the bedside drawer from the last guests, dusty bookshelves, and a couple of the cups had old coffee rings. They didn’t mention it to the host during the stay because they only had a 2 night booking, they certainly didn’t expect the host to bring a different mattress, they put their earplugs in at night because of the noisy neighbors, and the less than great cleaning details didn’t really affect their stay.
They might mention those things in a review to let future guests know that the mattress is quite firm, to bring earplugs, and that it could have been cleaner, and leave a 4*, rather than 5* review. After all, that’s what guest reviews are for, to let future guests know what to expect.
What do you envision that the host could say to them in a private message sent through HomeHost that would lead to a 5* review where they didn’t mention any of those things?
Also, the gap between when guests check out and when they get a review prompt is quite short. Do you think they are going to bother sending a message through this QR code when they are in transit home, arrive home exhausted from the journey, shower, eat, unpack and head to bed, then have to get up and go to work the next morning?
It seems much more likely to me that if and when they are ready to leave a review, they just leave a review, rather than bother to use that QR code.
Of course, I could be wrong.
And another thing: the only real perk to Superhost status is the $100 once a year voucher, which many hosts, including me, don’t even end up using.
Airbnb no longer has a Superhost filter and most guests don’t care- they book based on price and location and what the written reviews say. As long as the place isn’t below 4*, the star rating and Superhost isn’t going to have much effect.
And hosts who have had Superhost status, lost it for some reason, got it back in awhile, and so on, have found it had no effect whatever on their booking rates.
Shouldn’t this be deleted? Creating a post to create a discussion about their business is advertising and is not allowed here. Although the original poster seems to not know enough about Airbnb Hosting via there posts so that leaving it up would act as a warning to NOT use their business.
Maybe others who think they have a brilliant idea for what hosts need will take the responses as a warning that they probably don’t understand what hosts need because they have no experience as hosts themselves?
And also that hosts aren’t so clueless that they can’t spot an advertisement couched as a “Has anyone tried this? Seems like a good idea”, as if the poster is a host themselves.
Funny you should say that. I’ve occasionally been of the impression that Airbnb itself appears to know very little about hosting.
Yes, Mr. Chesky appears to have forgotten his humble beginnings as a host who provided an air mattress on the floor now that he’s a billionnaire.