Reviews on Airbnb are what makes the community so strong. They help bring transparency and keep you safe as a guest AND as a host.
Airbnb reviews of guests can sometimes come off as harsh, mean and even downright hurtful. Some are even pure lies. But many of the ‘bad’ reviews are rooted with some truth, yet some guests can take it too far and attack the host personally.
This post will help when you recover from a bad Airbnb review.
How do you deal with a bad Airbnb review?
The best advice on how to deal with a bad review is don’t get them in the first place.
If you do happen to get a bad review, take it as an opportunity to become better at hosting, even if it’s not your fault. Does a guest complain about being too far from downtown when they should have known from your description? Maybe you can be more explicit about your location being a 30-minute drive from downtown.
But more often, guests care enough about the Airbnb community to tell you what they really thought. So learn from it.
When you get the feedback or suggestion, listen openly, think about how you could improve, then implement changes if necessary.
Sometimes things that cause bad reviews are out of your control like the weather is too hot that week. But maybe it’s time to upgrade that 20 year AC unit that barely works.
Chocolates always make a good welcome gift for your Airbnb Guests.
Airbnb guests want to be heard
Bad reviews are just guests wanting to be heard…simple as that. Here are a few tips to curb bad reviews before they hit the Internet…
- Provide excellent SERVICE and be accommodating to reasonable requests.
- Send guests messages throughout their stay and ask if there is anything else you can do to make it better.
- Provide a welcome gift. This helps smooth things over that are rocky during check-in and provides a halo-effect for your rental.
- Have a locked suggestion box that guests can use to leave you a private message.
Here is a Pro tip from Airbnb Superhost Pierre from @airbnbeer:
“Always have a guestbook at disposal and invite people to leave a word 10 minutes before check-out. No one can politely refuse.
If the guest didn’t want to post a review on Airbnb, they now have to come up with something quick. When it will be time for them to actually write their Airbnb review, they will just need to remember what they wrote. This makes it a lot easier for a guest to post a review when they already wrote it!
If the guest wanted to leave a bad review? Same, and they will always write something nice in the guestbook. Since nobody wants to feel how hypocritical they are, no guest in this situation ever left a bad review (most just wouldn’t leave reviews, and some would actually copy-paste mentally whatever positive thing they wrote on the guestbook).” ~Pierre
Got too many guests to pay attention to writing reviews?
You’re in an enviable position. Not many hosts can say that they have too many guests for them to pay each the personal attention needed to write thoughtful reviews.
It used to be that you’d just forgot writing reviews entirely but now there’s a better way. You can pretty much automate the process with SmartBNB automation. You can store different templates for the different types and levels of reviews and even set rules for how it’ll automatically choose the right review. Nice to have if you have 1 listing, must have if you have more, especially if you have high volume listings. Or if you just want to become a passive “4 Hour Host”.
In the comments below, let me know of an experience you had with receiving a bad review.
- Was the review truthful?
- Did you make improvements?
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This free training is brought to you by James Svetec an Airbnb Expert who has managed over $1M in bookings & Symon He, the founder of LearnBNB, the #1 Airbnb hosting education blog.
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In my opinion pierre’s “Pro tip” of making guests feel too awkward/intimidated to leave a bad review by asking for feedback in person in order to make them feel hypocritical is very a manipulative tactic. Encouraging guests who are unhappy to leave no review or a “sugar coated” review is one of the things that is eroding trust in the Airbnb community and a reason that I do not trust hosts or their reviews anymore. Pleas don’t encourage it.
We’re not recommending anything like that. We’re simply suggesting hosts help guests feel heard. And it’s very powerful when you can do it in person. Helping a guest feel heard is not manipulation, it’s good hospitality. And if it also happens to reduce poor reviews, even better. Use their feedback to become a better host.
I live at an Air B and B, lived here for 3 years..
Guests complain to me all the time and feel intimidated by the host here when they have a request.. Something as simple as providing air conditioning; The host left for a 10 days with the house at 78 degrees during the summer, room rentals with full sun thru out the day feeling like 85, not to mention the lady had asthma due to allergies and was forced to cool her room by opening windows.. This same guest went back to her home in California for a weekend and by not being informed by the host about road maintenance had her car towed by the city because they were resurfacing.. This lady did not leave a bad review on Air B and B but she did spread the word in anither way and no other guests rented from the hygentist school girls were flying and driving in for a 30 day crash course. The home had 3 guest from that school withing 6 months and not one since last summer…
Hi Roxanne, I agree with you completely and responded woth a reply to the Author..
Thanks for being honest (:
I had a terribly bad experience recently.
I agreed to a guest (an Indian family of 2 adults, a child and an infant) after persuasion – in form off begging/pleading and pushing – by the distraught husband late the same evening at a night I was not expecting (or required to by my settings due to the hrs. message of request possible ) nor was my HOME prepared for guests. I was my self leaving in 1hr to travel 12hrs for an important exam (biostatistics) .
The guest sounded desperate and I understood they had no other option, as no one would take them and they’d arrive late.
Several messages of explaining my situation and making sure that they understood and AGRREED he said “yes, no problem. We understand, no need for anything, just accept the booking”
Still I spent most of my remaining hr at home cleaning, making up beds, and preparing for their arrival.
I made n sent videos of how to get in, (I trusted them with leaving a key) where to find things and welcoming instructions.
The husband made several msgs/called to ask for things (strangely for things that were just as explained like; “where are bedsheets and covers” – me; “in the beds” . Note, This is due to the cat, I make and cover bedding) all evening, until as late as 02:00 then I said goodnight.
Next day I ran into emergency changes in my plans and arrived back in my town1/2 a day earlier. Since I have an 8 year old and no other place to go – I contacted my guest and explained my unfortunate position.
I appologized and asked them to please understand but I had to come to my home. I clearly stated that they did not have to leave, if they wanted they could stay in the larger room (1 double sofabed + 1 couch in a livingroom sized space) just that I needed to sneak in with my sleeping child into ”her” SMALLER bedroom (family bunkbed: 1 singel up, 1double below) and stay out of their way until morning when we were supposed to have gotten back.
3-4 hrs of strange messaging followed, which ended with me saying. ”Sorry but I have no option (I cant stay sleeping with my daughter outside in swedish winter), I will reimburse you for the time n trouble, but lets settle all in morning, leave front door unlocked – they had my key – and no arguments tonight around the children please..we just need sleep (I travelled 26hrs straight ).
When I came 30minutes later, my door was looked, now all hell broke loose. (I met the wife)
She intentionally didn’t unlock the door, she also told me to leave (?!).. while I was trying to talk to her husband. Asking about them not letting the door open for me – coming with sleeping child in arms – the wife got both defiant and hostile Now, both things they’d written hrs before and saying to me during my return told me 100% that I would not want these people in my home, around my personal things and definitely not my animals.
So when she got nasty up in my face I told them to leave.
It took 2hrs of nastiness, me needing to call the police for assistance- all the time while the husband just kept calling AirBnb support telling them lies about me to push for getting a new place for them.
My child crying, scared to stay there with them, but us nowhere to go (also me uncomfortable leaving them there )
Leaving the house screaming obscenities, waking neighbors up, the wife threatened me but they left.
Now: what followed was a normal message from husband about return of payment for last day – of course, DONE.
My issues today are two.
1) They wrote me the review from hell – I could take it if it was “brutal truth” or “told as it was in details” regarding to why things went bad.
But they just pressed EVERY option on the app for complaint on each detail, AND lied about everything they could come up with..on top.
From first sentence to last, I think half a sentence was truthful. 99% pure fabrication, written clearly in affect.
About everything was missing, SMELLY, dirty, moldy, small, wrong, etc..
Now. This is dominating my page.
Yes, I answered to it but..
I haven’t had a booking request since it’s there.
How do I deal with it?
Can I have it removed since untruthful or I must delete my profile and create a new one?
It doesn’t help that another guest wrote “third time here, that says it all” just below, or that other guests left me personally written notes of thanks…
This is just bad for everyone.
I had contact with the service people at the time of these problems but they just kind of “we’ll not fine you or anything______……sorted it out” case closed.
What to do about this review?
So sorry about your situation. Email the link to your listing to [email protected] and we’ll take a look. There aren’t that many options but we could suggest some after taking a look.