I have just hosted a guest that booked for 5. Upon looking at my security 11 guests checked in. I sent her an invoice for the extra which she paid. We have every strict covid rules in Australia. This guest was annoyed she was caught out and has now left me a 1 star on my perfect 3 years record of 5 stars and Air BNb wont do a thing
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All you can do is respond to her review and point out that she did not follow your house rules and brought unregistered guests. I hope you also mentioned it on the review you wrote for her.
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You can get a review removed provided you can find a way to credibly present it as violating Airbnb’s content policy to at least one customer rep’s satisfaction.
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Last year you posted this:
Once your string of all five star reviews is broken, it’s broken. I’d advise relaxing about it. Yes, it’s annoying but it’s part of the business. As @jacquo has posted, even prize winning books with rave reviews get one star reviews on Amazon from people who are illiterate or jealous or whatever. To have almost 400 reviews at over 4.9 is great.
One thing I might suggest is to raise your prices. I know it’s winter there and the pandemic is surging but under $100 USD a night for an entire house is ridiculously cheap. Maybe raise your base price and reduce your per person price so you don’t have to argue with people about it.
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Can you copy and paste what the review said? If it goes against their very specific review standards, maybe you have a chance…
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The written review says “House was as discribed in listing - set up for all types of families.” Together with one star. It’s as if the guest knew exactly what they were doing. It’s not going to be removed.
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This. As your listing is now, as soon as I add more than one additional guest I’m up to $154.14 and by the time I’ve added 9 (you max) it’s up to $274.14.
That is still only just over $30 per person (which is tiny for a whole house) and I’m afraid that there are plenty of people who think that once they are paying for a whole house, they can add as many people as they want after paying your maximum.
Did you mean the extra person rate shown on the listing pricing or this part shown on your listing “Please use correct number of guests or additional $100 per guest not listed and extra guest fees will be charged”? If so, you can’t be surprised that the guest didn’t give you a great review.
Remember too that you have said “When required we can arrange a single trundle bed and double sofa bed for extra guests.” which implies to some that you really don’t stick accurately to your maximum. (Whether or not you meant it that way).
There are people who feel that showing a base price and then an additional per person price is a bit deceptive - similar to the way hotels will bung resort fees or expensive parking fees on top of the nightly rate.
As @KKC has pointed out, last year you also started a topic about getting an unfair review. so you don’t really have a perfect three-year record. Maybe it’s time simply not to worry about it? Potential guests are very unlikely to.
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Oh that’s ruthless. Yeah her review is so neutral I doubt there’s a way for AirBnB to remove it. Luckily you have enough wonderful guests that your rating is still stellar!
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Your rating is great and no one except you sees the 1 star so laugh all the way to the bank and block her so she can’t rebook.
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The thing is she booked for 5 . I confirmed in a message that there was 5. I watched her on camera get people to hide behind her so they wouldnt be noticed. I did send her a bill for the extra guests which she paid
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have most certainly did that
No i only charged her an extra $20 per person
Was the bad review worth the $120? This is not meant to be critical of your extra guest price and policy, but if the review/rating is really important to you, consider simplifying your bookings and eliminating your extra guest fees because what you experienced is a well-known problem among Airbnb hosts. Personally, though, the damage is done and 4.95 is still an awesome rating. Your current model seems to have been working well for over 350 guests, so you don’t really need to change anything. You just need to let go of the need to have a perfect 5.0 rating.
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Brian my point is that i hate sneaky people who lie. I have the extra rates as i have a lot of just couples stay and it gets a lot of bookings and i am happy at that price point. Only charge extra after 2 people, so if i had a high price for the whole house i would miss out on a lot of 2 people bookings in area
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Forget about hating sneaky people who lie. It’s a business transaction. You set your pricing and policies and expect to be paid based on them. I totally agree with that.
Does that mean there aren’t many guests booking for more than 2 people? I’ll admit that I don’t know anything about your market, but with a listing that supports 6 or 8 people, I wouldn’t offer a favorable price for couples at all if there was sufficient demand from larger groups.
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Raise your base price to the max you would charge with extra folks. You’ll get better guests without the hassle.
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There is at least anecdotal evidence that supports this recommendation.
However, @Nesral has at least 350 reservations and over 3 years of experience, so I think she has a lot more relevant data at her disposal than most hosts. I hope she can use it to maximize the business potential. Seriously, that data is a virtual gold mine. Use it!
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I sometimes read 1 and 2 star reviews of other places just to see how deluded some people are. If 95% of them are 4 or 5 star (in the real world where a 4 star review is a good thing) I don’t worry about them. I don’t check my own apart from to read them because Air emails me. I recently had a guest say the reason her corgis barked so much was because it was too quiet so they reacted to every tiny gust of wind or sea bird in the distance. Okay.
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I had this happen with retaliatory 3 stars. Guest broke my house rules, tried to bully me to take cash for an additional night (nope, they were awful), and they left a neutral review with 3 stars.
They host in Italy so they knew what they were doing. And I was too green to post back appropriately. But I did click the “would not host again” button…
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