To think that if Air BnB think a 4 out of 5 rating is so bad that they should tell guests?

[hooliodancer]

I have just started doing Air BnB on my house. It was going very well, I had all 4 and 5 star reviews and I was very happy. Every written review has been very complimentary.

I had a warning email from Air BnB saying my listing was in danger of being removed because the standard of my house was unacceptable.

I have just learnt that if your average goes below 4.3 they remove your listing.

I really think that if this is the case the guests should be told that if they give a 4 they are saying that the property is unacceptable.

Personally, I would think 4 stars was a good review to give.

So shouldn't Air BnB tell people the implications of their ratings?

It’s fucking ridiculous. I manage a few Airbnb properties and frequently have this problem. There are a few cracked tiles in one of the bathrooms. Listing paused. Guests found the seagulls a little too noisy (in a coastal city?) Listing paused. A light bulb blew in the communal stairway. Listing paused. Furniture was not arranged to the guests liking. Listing paused.

I’ve had this conversation with Airbnb so many times (and thankfully managed to avoid having any listings actually removed) but they’re not interested.

As far as I’m concerned star ratings work like—five star: excellent, four star: very good, three star: good, two star: satisfactory, one star: poor.

According to Airbnb however: five star: excellent, four star: shit, three star: shit, two star: shit, one star: extremely shit.

And yes. They need to make guests aware of their very bizarre rating system. It’s beyond frustrating.

I'm glad I saw this thread. What a bonkers system!

Finally: 8 4s and 2 5s would give you an average of 4.2. That is 1 way of getting all 4s and 5s and still dropping below 4.3

Typical American company not understanding British people's more reserved approach to giving feedback.

This sounds spot on.... Exceptional should be, as it implies, the exception. Not the norm.

Flightywoman, I would say you can't really mark them down on not having a washing machine or sugar unless they stated these would be provided. Also, the number of toilets were presumably in the listing? I think the Air B and B view is 'does the property reflect the listing?'. But they don't tell anyone that that is the criteria.

The towels, I would contact them and ask for more. That is not enough towels!

I was going to say the same to flightywoman. The number of bathrooms/toilets should be stated in the listing - if it differed from the listing then they should be marked down.If it is as stated then you knew what you were getting and can't complain. Did the listing say that towels are provided - not all do. If it said they were then it is fair to assume you will have enough towels for each person declared on the booking, including towels big enough to use after showering. Again - mark down if it said towels included and you weren't given 1 bath towel each. AirBnB can then take it up with the owners.

I assume that the owner has the opportunity to approve/disapprove a review before it is actually listed as the last one DH posted didn't appear for over a week and the owner texted him to apologise. So I'm guessing if there is a dreadful review then the owner has the opportunity to defend it with Air BnB before it goes live. (DH's delayed review was a good one and a property we will be booking again as it is near DS's University)

You can't assume anything, especially that guests have actually read the listing properly! I'm always getting dinged for location - it's not like I can move my home, it is where it is. I have 2 overall 3 - one because the guest didn't realise they weren't getting the whole flat for £35 a night in the middle of Edinburgh, the second because apparently I had bed bugs. There's nothing I can do about the first, they clearly didn't read the listing. The second wasn't true but that was their perception so that's what they marked. I also have had several guests who mark me 5 for everything but a 4 overall. Bizarre, and those 4 bring my average down so that the next 3* for something I can't do anything about will bring my average down and leave me in danger of being delisted.

Also, you cannot change any review once it's been submitted. Both the guest review and the host review go 'live' at the same time, if only one of you leaves a review then that goes 'live' after 14 days. As a host you can only respond to a review in public once it's 'live'.

Bigbluebus, no you don't get to approve reviews. Not sure why there was a delay for your husband. Possibly because the host didn't write a review immediately, as the two reviews show up at different times.

I

I just think it's shocking. People should always know what the implications of what they score.

If 4 means shit then people should be aware of that.

I only know about this because when I first used Airbnb and booked a room in someones house not a whole property, I felt a bit awkward/worried about sharing a place with a total stranger, so I googled "How to be a good Airbnb guest" or something like that to check for any tips/etiquette etc...

Came across the Reddit Airbnb forum/section which is a mix of hosts (mostly) and guests and saw on there that hosts were saying anything less than 5 stars is regarded as a bad review by Airbnb, which I agree is ridiculous, because a) most guests don't know this and b) many people leaving reviews would still regard 4 stars as good to very good and only reserve 5 stars for perfection.

Is booking.com like this too? I only choose properties which are 8 or above on booking.com. but maybe the 8s are just some substandard grotty hole!

Booking. com is misleading too as you would expect the scale to go from 0 to 10 or perhaps 1 to 10, but it doesn't - their reviews are not on a 0-10 scale, but 2.5-10. Every review score is intentionally inflated.
ro-che.info/articles/2017-09-17-booking-com-manipulation

Also, I don't stay in high end/luxurious Airbnb properties as am on a limited budget, so I would never rate based on how luxurious it was and I would not mark down for not including washing powder for example, although it's a massive bonus if you do. Some things are a bit odd though - eg a place with a coffee machine gave me 2 coffee pods (great, some give you none) but I was there for 3 nights and surely most people would drink 1 coffee per day /each morning, so why not give me 3 pods. :)

My priorities as a guest are location (Airbnb does not give exact location but I expect hosts to say in their description if there is anything notable eg on busy noisy main road/ above a bar so can be noisy etc), Cleanliness (not unreasonable to expect somewhere to be at least reasonably clean, comfy bed and a decent shower (not a pathetic dribble). As I am mainly using it as a place to sleep, shower and sometimes eat, but will also be out most of the time. Plus a responsive and friendly host. Tick all those boxes and I am happy, anything else is a bonus, but very much appreciated (eg the free bottle of wine one host left for me) - but using Airbnb logic I must give both places 5 stars whereas my logic would be 4 stars for the one and 5 stars for the other. If you are supposed to give everywhere that meets your expectations 5 stars then you have no way to differentiate - between the very good (meets your expectations) and the exceptional (goes beyond them), which surely just devalues the whole point of the reviews??

I think clearly they want all their properties to be 5 star on their website. I agree with you, it makes the the notion of reviews pointless.

Uber works to this principle. 5 ⭐️ OR ELSE!!!!!

Was away from WiFi.

It's a little complicated as I didn't book it or see the listing and we were only there a couple of days - the rest of the party are still there - so I've got no idea on the washing machine. But towels - yes, apparently towels are included and there were 5 hand towels provided. No others.

The owners had also asked if everyone could bring their own pillows and bed linen, inc duvet.

Afaik this is their first Airbnb booking, so maybe the towel situation will improve.

Bring your own duvets? Are they nuts?

From Googling it seems that Airbnb's threat to remove listings that fall below 4.3 is just that - a threat. Surely if lot's of people were being delisted for going below an average score of 4.3/5 there would be loads of hosts complaining about this? Yet all I can find online is some posts from 2 years ago (2016) where people said they had an email saying only that they might be temporarily delisted. By the way, an Airbnb host claimed in the comments below a Guardian online article that it happens to any property which falls below 4.6 which would be even more ridiculous - they also accused me of lying when I posted about my experience posted previously - clearly they are the one lying as there are plenty of properties on the platform rated below 4.6.

Surely with the massive growth in Airbnb bookings they would want as many hosts as possible to meet the demand (although I think a fair way of removing the genuinely bad ones would be a good policy).

I had a look at a place I stayed at in Grenoble in June and it is still listed - despite an average score of 3.5 from 14 reviews. The score is also probably boosted from one review which gave all 5 stars, correctly names the host but talks about a beautiful designer flat "which could be featured in a magazine" on 2 floors in Lyon - completely the wrong city (mentions Lyon twice) and nobody would describe the flat in Grenoble as designer or beautiful or magazine feature worthy and also it's not on 2 floors - so no idea how that review happened!?

The UK place I mentioned above is also still listed despite an average score of 2.5 from 7 reviews...

I was looking today, and in my search area every single property was either 5 star or just a bit shaved off the 5 star. Nothing at all below a 4.

I had a look at the independent hosting forums(eye opening stuff!), and there were quite a few on there saying their listing had been suspended.

I sounds to me like AirBandB deliberately make the scoring criteria unclear.

I've done some tutoring. I had all 5* ratings until one client left 4. It happened when I left an appointed one hour session after 25 mins having waited at their property on eventing in January for them to turn up. She reckons she was just next door and her DD told her she was just 5 mins late. It matters as I haven't had any interest since.

People are deluded about feedback and what it means. Same client cancelled once on the day because her DD hadn't done any independent work, so probably not any great loss to me as an income.

Excuse the typos

I didn’t know this. I’m currently in an air BnB house which has great reviews and it is good but I wouldn’t give it 5. However reading this I will make sure I do give it a good score as I don’t want to lose someone business as tbf it is a 4/5 but I’ll email a couple of things the owners could improve on directly to them I think. You know like making sure the cleaners have wiped out the fridge & don’t say there’s a welcome hamper when there isn’t one 🙄

I just got 2 five star reviews, so the threat has gone now. But the house is so far down the listing now no one can find it.

So many other listings have 100plus 5 star reviews and nothing else. I just don't know how we can achieve that .All our written reviews are glowing.