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Had a question from a potential guest regarding smoking at the RTB Victorian Catastrophe. The request was for 6 adults. I do the thing and ask if there are any children and say smoking outside is fine. I then go and look at his single review. The written review was fine, the rating for cleanliness and house rules were way down.
The Catastrophe is precious to me and I like guests to appreciate and respect the property.
I go back to the potential guest and ask if there were any issues with his first stay as his rating wasn’t great.
Previous host has a closed calendar and without open dates, couldn’t ask a question.
OMG - he lost it!
Not aware of any problems, left the place spotless, how dare I question his quality as a guest……
Needless to say - no booking for him, but I found the two faced review a real problem as I am wearing the gutless approach.
Hosts who do this need a big smack upside the head. It’s super cowardly, and totally misleads other hosts. Not to mention that hosts who don’t use IB can’t see a guest’s star ratings- we only have the BS written review to go on.
I wish a plethora of bad guests on the hosts who do this.
I simply don’t understand it at all. I imagine that many of us have had less-than-ideal guests and wondered why on earth previous hosts had praised them and given them great reviews. I just don’t get it. Why on earth do they do that?
I just hope that karma does its thing and sends them guests who have brilliant reviews but who are horrible in reality.
Hosts who don’t write accurate reviews and/or give inaccurate star ratings to undeserving guests are being very, very selfish.
There should be special platform subset for hosts who do this. They could only read reviews from other hosts who do this, and they can just keep trading the bad guests around.
Oh, I learn something new everyday here! I confess I didn’t realize with IB I can see their stars per category!? Skipping off to explore!
Ok…I see what you mean…I can see their average per category. I was thinking I could see it per review. Still, good info but even better if per review.
Kudos to you for the expert follow up and uncovering of the crazy. So he inquired or requested to book and you declined or he withdrew or you let it expire?
It was an enquiry, he wanted to know my smoking rules. Question asked at 12-30am.
My first response was 12.35 am
Clicked on his profile to look at his only review.
Verbiage was fine, stars awful.
Tried to reach out to the host, but calendar closed and you need dates to ask a question.
So asked him if there were issues at his first Airbnb stay as his review rating from his host was very poor…… He said he was a fabulous guest.
Previous host had 64 reviews…. I think they should have known better.
I let it expire. I don’t decline where possible and have no cancellations on any of my listings.
If you click on the overall score it will show you the star rating for each: overall score, cleanliness, communication and observance of house rules.
It’s important to look because Airbnb is très generous with guest ratings and how they are rounded as opposed to how they do hosts. For instance, I have a guy that checked out, hmm, let me see, 9 days ago. If I only look at his overall score it says 5.0, but when I click on the 5.0 it shows me that he has a 4.5 in cleanliness and a 4.5 in communication. Truly, it should much much lower. And it will be 5 days from now
One of the many ways that Airbnb manipulates this is by rounding and displaying the guest ratings in a generous fashion. The other way they do it is scaring hosts with 4 star reviews being bad. Because hosts know that a 4 star rating is a poor rating they think that giving their guests a 4 stars rating has the same effect. But it doesn’t.
A 4 star rating doesn’t even show up at all for guests with as few as 3 reviews. I’ve given 4 stars in all categories and then seen the guest ratings in all categories remain at 5.0. My guy has 5 reviews so he may have even had a 2 star or 3 star rating or multiple 4 stars that is only showing as a 4.5 in communication and cleanliness. I’ve given a guest with one other review a 2 star rating in house rules and her score only dropped to a 4.5 for house rules. That’s some crazy math.
Hosts need to know that guest ratings do not add up or divide or subtract or even mitosis or meisosis the same way that host ratings do. It is a different system and different math (cause Airbnb). If your guest was not 5 stars then they are not 4 stars because 4 stars for a guest is not a bad rating, they are either 3 stars or 1 star, otherwise they will keep masquerading as 5 star guests.
Oh my, word, yes! I’ve been so flabbergasted when I’ve rated a truly poor guest down just to see it have no to almost no impact on their overall rating. And I bet if I search and search on Air I’ll be lucky to find info on how they calculate guest ratings or how to drill down to see it by category.
So manipulative, not just of the scores but of hosts!
And I still hate I can only see their generously rounded category scores. I want to see what each host gave them by category
I know I get regularly raked over the coals by hosts who love Instant Book, but when guests’ star ratings tell a different story than the ratings they actually got, it doesn’t seem like the IB requirement for good reviews does much good.
They could only read reviews from other hosts who do this, and they can just keep trading the bad guests around. 
