That little half-grey Location bastard is still staring boldly out from my listing…
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$89 - 3%.
My suite is $79 right now, and barely a bite. August is dead dead. It’s a studio so I can’t get away with more than $99 even in the high season. The only exception is Christmas and NY week.
This is an excellent desition from the Airbnb team!
Some categories are better expressed on the review´s comments than with the star rating that it is always inaccurate and it is higly subjective to the reviewer.
CHECK-IN
This was an akward category from the very start. You were prompt at arrival or you don´t. For me it is an item that better belongs to a binary rating ( Yes/No) than to a 5 star rating. What does it mean 3 stars in Arrival? This is one of the items that are better expressed on the reviews comments like “The host make me wait 3 hours to get the keys for the check-in”. That is enough for me to get an idea of what kind of host you are.
VALUE
This is highly subjective to the reviewer and it is not always understood by them when they rate us. Some of them associated Value to Quality and others to the actual relationship Quality/Price. So, in this sense, there are a lot of low budget spaces that sometimes get a low Value rating when they are in fact a good value for what they offer. In another point of view, Value is redundant and it is better expressed with Accuracy. If the place is accurate with its pictures and description then it should be a good value for you because that is why you choose it. I mean, you were fine to pay those Xusd to finally get what you saw on the website (Accuracy) so why would you give the host a bad value rating. I have 5 stars on Value but most of times I got 4 is from people that travel low budget so they always find everthing more expensive than what they would like to pay. This is unfair for host and a bad measure for the user that wants to rent your place.
LOCATION
Hard topic. But yes! It must go away. Location is definelty the most important item from the category that is better expressed in the comments. I prefer someone saying “The place is central, close to bars, safe at night, and with good access to the public transpor” than a 4/5 star rating-. On my opinon location differs highly between guests and their stay. It isn´t the same someone that stayed at your place 2 nights that someone that stayed 10/15 nights. The first one didn´t gather enough information to rate you on Location whereas the second can give you a more accurate rate on Location. Another aspect is that the location can´t accomodote all the guest´s needs. So if you are someone that likes to party out then having night clubs and bars around means you are in an excellent location for you but if you want a quite place having night acticty around isn´t the best place for you. So you got 5 stars in the first review and then 3 stars in the second one, and both users where right however the next user (who is also a night lover) will see 4 stars in average when it should be the right place for him. Again. location is hard to blend in a 5 stars review system and it is better expressed in the comments
CLEANLINESS, COMMUNICATION, ACCRUACY
IF I would chose 3 items that should stay in the review´s summary, this will be the ones. Accuracy is an excellent item to blend into a 5 star review system. You can gave 1-2-3-4 or 5 stars easily, and it is highly informative for future users. Going further, it is more easy for an user to rate you on Accuracy that who describe what it was missing from the place that it was ther on the listing´s page. Thumbs up for Accuracy! Cleanliness is the same case. I feel comfortable to rate a place on Cleanliness with a 5 star review system abnd I think there is colective sense of how to measure a place that is clean or not. Communication is also an important aspect to deal with and easy to rate. Most of the listings I saw have 5 or 4.5 in Communication. I haven´t saw many with 4 stars here but I believe it is easy for the guest to rate us on Communication.
3 Likes
Mine appeared that way too. If location was removed, thank god! That’s the category I got the most 3’s in.
Let it go, my dear. Don’t be a perfectionist :)))) Just look at the ratings for the very best, costliest hotel/motel near you.
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Another change - the price no longer shows until you enter the dates!
I am getting prices on my anonymous browser.
interesting. I’m on firefox. I entered a city with no dates, and on the photo it said “Check Prices” and I could only get prices once I entered dates
I was on Firefox as well! Odd. They could be filtering by IP address so different areas of the US are getting different pages.
yep - testing it here and there… I’m looking on the east coast of the US
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Guys, could you look up at your end if prices show for Tokyo? With or without dates?
prices in Tokyo are showing in Firefox El Capitan, anonymous browser.
I had the same thing here on Chrome desktop and Chrome mobile, browsing listings in my area, but prices reappeared today.
There was a song a few years ago “Let’s give them something to talk about…”
I think the airbnb programmers must sing that song when they are playing around with these changes…
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I have also seen a third version of the Review ratings in my browser on where you only have just the Overall Experience and the percent you get of each number of stars. The rest 6 categories are all gone. I think this is the best one! … Overall Experience and comments from guest will give users the most accurate description of how your place is.
In terms of the price, I also believe it is a good decision to wipe them ut when guest haven’t select their travel dates. There are plenty of hosts which base price means nothing. Most of their price structure is defined by season or by the need to fill that empty holes so the base price isn’t reflecting the actual price of the property. In fact, I have seen other hosts that in order to gain more exposure they set a very low price so they can be seen by guests when they filter by price but with no travel dates yet. If Airbnb could let me add something extra, I will also remove the prices shown in the calendar to the guests as they let them push us to down price our properties when they see you have other days at a lower price of what they are going to pay for.
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I am now showing no base price and the three categories only. Overall experience is the best, so it matches the overall review, of course I would eliminate the stars altogether, since it IS the hospitality field where there is a lot of confusion between ‘hotel 5-star’ system and ‘private-home’ 5-star system. The stars will be the next to go, because once they go to only Overall experience, which they will eventually go to only, the star system will be a redundant exercise.
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My last guest did her review in front of me, never had that happen before, anyway, when it came to value she said “I don’t know I’ll have to put a 4 or 3. I said do you know how much hotels are here? Did you see people are renting out tents for more than I charge? She"no, but the tents are for those who want a camping experience.” I then explained they have to go into the house in the middle of the night to use the bathroom unless they want to go outside, which the hosts do not want, of course! She then said “why do people want to come to Cody anyway?” Arrgh!
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I saw a listing yesterday that looked nice in the picture and had “from $10” with the little instant book lightening icon. I was very curious at that price but when I hovered over the dates on the calendar I couldn’t find a day less than $10. I’d like to know what they did to get that trick. Require a 3 day minimum and then mark one open day on the calendar $10?
It seemed the arrival and value categories disappeared too.
I Also noticed this for some time, but the host’s picture does not appear on the listing on the search results (that is you can’t see the host’s picture until you click the listing)
I want to know too.
1 Like