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My listing didn´t get any new reservation since the new feature that Airbnb launched on which your reviews are group in two columns by the Highest and Lowest ratings they got.
From how I understand, the Lowest section gathers reviews that got ratings from 1 to 3 stars (Overall Experience). The Highest section gathers the rest.
The thing is that the majority of my guests gave me 5 stars in more than 200 reviews, a few subset of 8-9% gave me 4 stars (but comments are good) and only one girl gave me 3 stars (it was 2 years ago). That girl gave me the most retaliatory comment I got. It was terrible. She said the mattress hurt her back, that the apartment felt cramped and a full set of lies just to damage my reputation. It was horrible and she was a person full of hate. Before, she stayed in another bnb where she also stated this terrible comments saying (for e.g.) that the couch smelt like dog pee.
When I got her review (more than 2 years ago), I wasn´t worried because she was the ONLY one saying things like that about my apartment and the next reviews will hide her dirty words. But now that Airbnb is highlighting her review as the first and only one from the group of Lowest review, every user will read it, and they will certainly doubt about staying with me. In fact, I was having healthy bookings until this feature was released.
I´m so worried about this feature and I don´t understand how Airbnb could think this is good. By sure not for hosts, but how it could be would for guests. A review left years ago is totally DATED and the ones under the group from 1 to 3 stars came from the most retaliatory guests. I know she was a bad guest but the user interested in staying with me don’t, so when he reads her comment, he will doubt about staying with me. Her review is DATED.
I have test how this new feature might work in other listings and I find a lot of them under my same situation. Superhosts with a lot of amazing listings paired with just one or two terrible reviews from the most retaliatory guests highlighted under the Lowest review group for a quick access to the user that is interested in reading the worst of our listings.
I hate it to! Defintely a rubbish thing to have on hosts profile! What have airbnb done!! I have a really hateful review to. I have just had one booking since its been put on.
I still can not see this on my profile page. Where else should I look? I now notice that there is a search function for the reviews so you can search for dirt, grime, disappointing and get results if those words are there.
I can see it one of my listings, but not on the other two. Oh, how I hate to see/revisit the guest who gave me three stars and a mess that took me many extra hours to clean up (not to mention the lingering smell he left behind). Grrrr. Oh, well.
But seriously, I have two listings and it happens from time to time where it goes silent for a week+ then it’ll get hot and I’ll have 3+ reservations in a single day.
The feature really puts the pressure on hosts to knock it out of the park with every guest. No more ‘burying reviews’ that aren’t so great. I personally think this makes it hard for new hosts who may not have their system straight yet and a single sub par review will haunt them for eternity.
I had a guest that I would not review. He had major mental health issues and I told airbnb that I could not review him as even his family told me he came off medication and was not in a good place. Airbnb told me that even if he reviewed me and gave me a 1, it would disappear shortly and no one would notice it. This guest never reviewed in the end but i think staff in airbnb are going to be stuck and can no longer tell hosts not to worry about the odd bad review. I don’t like this change
To stop these stupid ideas from Airbnb, is it worth posting in Host Voice to try and get them to re-think?
Why on earth would Airbnb want to highlight a host’s “lowest” reviews? Surely it’s more likely to damage their brand rather than enhance it, especially as most of us generally get 4 or 5 stars with just a random 1 or 2 either from a nightmare guest or because of something which was beyond our control at the time.
It’s really rather irritating but I will just see it as a way for people bothered by the review to self deselect thereby saving me drama. My crappiest review came from someone complaining they were expecting the whole flat for £32 per night. Yeah ok. Anyone reading that review should have the sense to dismiss it - if not I’d rather they didn’t stay anyway.
I agree this feature is BS, it would actually make me break my golden rule of not responding to a review and I can see how this is totally unfairly damaging your profile as it is totally unrepresentative. I suggest you lodge a formal complaint with Airbnb. If you can give us a generic address others will too. I’m happy to do so.
Yes I agree, i had thought of this last week. Every host who disagrees with it must voice their opinion. The more the better so air can sit up and listen. If hosts just sit back being lazy not voicing these concerns then air will just keep making silly changes which arent in the hosts favour. We are the first point of contact to making them money afterall.
As much as I dislike this new feature, it is the same now as every other online marketplace. You can search by star rating on amazon, and most online sellers I can think of. As much as lowest ratings stink, it should only negatively affect you if you have more than 1 or 2. All most of these bad reviews do is reflect poorly on the guest who left it. But I can think of a few shady places in my area that it may finally get them removed since over half of their reviews are below 5 star.
I don’t think the Amazon comparison is totally appropriate. I seek out average/low Amazon ratings to see what issues a product has and to determine whether those issues are relevant to my intended use of the product. (Like, I don’t care if it’s difficult to operate a coffee maker in the dark because I would never have to do that but I understand that would be a major downside for someone who does).
An outlying poor review by a high maintenance guest, however, is being showcased under this new display structure and appears equally representative. I also can’t believe that AIR isn’t at least limiting this to the last 12 months so that old issues aren’t showing up (what if someone has replaced a mattress, etc?)
Something that I WOULD find useful is if I could sort reviews by type of traveler (like on tripadvisor): Families with young children, couples, etc. I’m much more interested in another family’s experience of a space and I’m sure a romantic couple doesn’t care about reviews mentioning organic baby bath products, a pack and play, and books/toys.
You can’t use Amazon review’s system as a source of comparison.
In Amazon, you rate a product that is not supposed to change in time so in that scope, it isn’t essential to keep a chronological order of reviews. A review left 2 years ago of an Iphone 6 has the same relevance than one received just yesterday.
However, when you rate an accommodation it does matter the chronological order because those bad reviews have probably been addressed and rectified in our selling product. So by removing the chronological order is like mixing reviews from the Iphone 6 and Iphone 7 as if people were talking about the same phone.
We are room 1.0 when we start hosting, we got good and bad reviews at first. We became room 2.0 the next year, we gain more experience but there still so much to improve and learn. We built room 3.0 and the process never ends. It doesn’t make sense that potential guests have to read reviews of room 1.0 at the very top when we have solved those issues in our new and better product room 5.0.
Of course, there is no room 1.0 or room 5.0 here but the point is that our vacation rental of 3 years ago, isn’t the same we have now and that is why the chronological order is SO IMPORTANT.
This is the same graphic representation of reviews that TripAdvisor, Google, and loads of others use. I wouldn’t let it bother us too much. The important thing is to have that graph be top heavy, which is the way most of ours look anyway. As Zandra mentioned, it’s not going to affect most of us. I’ve had some crappy reviews way in the past that I’m sure will show up, but in the meantime I am getting a steady stream of bookings.
@chicagohost - Perhaps the Amazon comparison is not appropriate, but the Homeaway/VRBO one is. On those listing sites, you can choose which reviews to read by star category - and have, for as long as I remember.
