The gold market he’s talking about is a couple of shops next to each other 100 meters down from my apartment. I do not understand how shops selling gold can make noise, as it’s not FMCG and someone rarely walks in to buy gold. I’m thinking about replying, but I want to put it in a way that shows he cramped 5 people inside an apartment that can handle 3 at most.
I wouldn’t reply. In general, if someone doesn’t leave a really scathing review, I tend not to reply to little snarky comments that guests leave, unless there are factual errors. For example, one couple wrote that they enjoyed the grill, but had to buy their own coal. What to respond to that? Guests like them will skip my place, and normal guests will just laugh at the nonsense. Win win for me. 
The noise is a very subjective thing and it is a thing that bad guests tend to bring up most often as it is hard to verify. If no one else mentioned it before, I don’t think guests will take the complaint very seriously. I also had a bad guest once, who used his review to mostly complain about me (since i didn’t want to accommodate all his nonsensical requests) and then mentioned the noise in order to criticize at least something about the apartment. Since majority of my previous reviews praise the peacefulness of my place, his noise complaint had absolutely no bite. 
If I reply can he reply back? Or is it a one time thing?
I’m not sure. But seriously, don’t bother with that. Anyone who clicks on his profile will see your review as well. I always do that as a guest in order to get a broader picture and verify the reviewer’s claim. If you respond to every tiny thing, you will come off as sensitive and nitpicky, which is worse than having some bullshit in one of the comments.
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No, he can’t reply back. Honestly, skip the gold noise comment. He’s just being nitpicky and most new guests will disregard. If you do reply, you have to be so careful not to sound defensive. Your new guests will judge you on how you receive a complaint.
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Yea, gave it a good thought and it’s not worth it.
Thanks for the valuable advice.
Good decision. When I first read the guest’s review, I was so immersed in all the positive comments that I barely noticed the mention of noise. It just did not stand out.
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I was reviewing everyone, but now I wait and if they don’t review me I don’t review them. Bad policy? Every one of my non reviewed guests would have gotten five stars from me. Of course if they were bad guests I’d definitely leave a review whether or not hey reviewed me.
Why?
I believe in reviewing everyone. Reviews are the lynchpin of the system. Take for example all the folks who say “I require IB guests to have prior recommendations.” Well where did those come from? Elf asses? No, hosts have to write them.
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Dont rent to this guy…and in the future, it is better for you to message the cheapskate and refuse to accept his price, but wait 23 hours and approve him…he will have moved on and you dont have a decline on your record…accept the guest, decline the request. Works every time for me.
And 101, I would not leave a detailed review like you wrote. Just say he was a fine guest once you got the wrinkles ironed out and leave him a four.
Put the details in your privatemessage to ABNB.
I think you handled the situation very well.
Thats why I limit it to 2 people and there is only one bed.I always confirm its 2 adults;no pets or little kids.The more people you have, the more demands they make and the bigger the mess and the higher risk of not getting a five star review!
yes true. I guess I’ll just wait til the last day to review them to see if they will write a review first? I just always tell guests as they leave that if they enjoyed their stay to please take a moment to leave a review and I’ll do the same. I also tell them we’d love any and all feed back on what we could have done better on a private message.
I was hoping that the review process would be reciprocal. Maybe I’m just overthinking.
Me too, but it is not. Some guest just cannot be bothered to review unless they are complaining about something.
RR
I have never really agreed with this malarkey about leaving reviews until the last minute. My goal is let future hosts what the guests were like (99.9% good, usually) so them leaving a review for me doesn’t really matter too much. Leaving it to the last minute always seems to be too time-consuming to me. By the time the fortnight is up I’ve forgotten who the people were anyway. And with my memory, I’d have to set a reminder on my phone or a note in a diary and it’s all too much hassle for me.
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But if they don’t leave a review yours won’t post until the last minute anyway.
On the rare occasion of having a suboptimal guest I’ve wished I could post right away, they didn’t review me and by the time my review posted 2 weeks later their trip was probably over.
Airbnb will remind you every day on the platform, every few days via email and probably via smartphone notification as well (I have some of that stuff turned off).
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I would just tell him that he has to check out as scheduled (Sunday, May 21 at noon) because you have another guest checking in on Sunday afternoon. Go to the calendar and block it, so if he looks, he will see that it’s booked.
Ok new rule. @KKC and @cabinhost. You are both very wise. Please know I’ve been a lurker on this site for many months before actually signing up. I’ve come up with a compromise for myself. We’ll see how it works. No review for me, no review for you…except, if guest has issues, always review to give other hosts the heads up. At the 11 th hour. If they already have good reviews but don’t review me, I’m not going to bother leaving them a thumbs up because they could not be bothered…why should I? If they are new on the scene and have no reviews I will give them a 5 star, when deserved, and hope the good karma will come back my way!
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The stolen stool thread did it for me. Sounded like an adventure which I’m always down with. I promptly (errrr finally) posted my Airbnb ad!
Ultimately that’s what you have to do, whatever works for you. You don’t owe other hosts anything per se, but I will make one more pitch for reviewing over non-reviewing.
I usually review right away because I believe in it and I just like to clear my “to do” list. But sometimes I get busy and I don’t review right away. Sometimes guests review soon after I get my email notification that I can review so I assume they get the same notification and respond. If I take a few days to respond I quite often get a review after mine is submitted meaning they reviewed after and probably because of the notification that I’ve reviewed them. Their curiosity is piqued and they want to see how I rated them. So if you refuse to be first to review you are probably going to get significantly fewer reviews.
What does that matter? Maybe it doesn’t but Airbnb does have minimum standards of “trips reviewed” for both the for work category and to maintain superhost status. I want both of those things so I’m going to continue reviewing.
I don’t know how much number of reviews counts in the algorithim but I know that when I search now
Maybe that’s because Airbnb knows how I search and who I book with and they “know” I only book with experienced hosts or maybe it’s a big part of search for everyone. Also Airbnb is always changing their standards or experimenting. So if they change something and give a premium to hosts with lots of reviews there isn’t going to be any way for you to go back and recoup those reviews you didn’t care about getting the first time.
I’m sure there are many guests saying the same thing to themselves. I don’t understand assuming that a guest “couldn’t be bothered” and that’s why they didn’t review. It’s like 6 year olds on a dare “you go first!”
And I suppose if everyone is just average and unremarkable, nothing particularly good or bad that works fine.
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I usually review right away too. If someone is going to give me an unfair bad review they usually do so regardless of when I submit my own review.
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