For those new to AirBNB, after a stay you’re given the option of leaving a public review and star ratings. You’re also given the opportunity to send the host any feedback privately about your stay; this private feedback doesn’t impact ratings and helps us learn where we can improve.
AirBNB, first and foremost, wants guests to enjoy their stay and to make sure that listings are described accurately. That’s a bit challenging since each home is unique and not every host may have learned the best way to provide an enjoyable experience. Therefore, feedback from guests is very valuable.
We strive to provide a 5 star experience. If anything is wrong or goes wrong during your stay, let us know as soon as possible so that we can work to make it right. If we’ve earned it, we would greatly appreciate a 5 star review at the end of your stay.
AirBNB significantly penalizes hosts who receive anything less than 5 star reviews. In fact, many guests are unaware that an average of 4.7 stars can actually cause a host to be removed from the AirBNB platform. More typically, however, listings are closed down in the 4.3 range. For this reason, you will find 4 star hotels out there, but you won’t find a 4.0 star AirBNB. See, for example, how metrics are tracked below for hosts.
So the least we can say is that the AirBNB rating system is rather confusing. To give you a better understanding, we designed the following (cheeky) guide to the rating system:
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Perfection does not exist, but we were happy here. |
| ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Several issues need to be improved. |
| ⭐⭐⭐ | Major problems that should be fixed immediately. |
| ⭐⭐ | Close it down at once. |
| ⭐ | Put these hosts into jail. |
We do everything in our power to provide an accurate description of the property (including listing a more precise location than required prior to booking). We kindly ask that you use the accuracy of our listing as a basis for your ratings rather than the “best” hotel you can possibly imagine as the basis for comparison. Even a 4 star in a subcategory substantially affects rankings and will result in fewer bookings.
We would really appreciate the opportunity to mitigate an unfortunate situation during your stay rather than be surprised by it in the post-stay ratings. We aren’t bothered by requests for additional information or a problem - that’s what we’re here to do: give you the best stay possible!
Likewise, we are very forgiving in our ratings, acknowledging that misunderstandings and accidents do sometimes happen. We certainly don’t want our guest to have difficulty renting a place in the future due a low rating related to a situation than can be easily resolved. For that reason, 99%+ of our ratings to guests are 5 stars. The <1% of low ratings we have given are due to either substantial/egregious or repeated violations of house rules that we have been unable to rectify.
The star rating and other feedback you’ve left for other hosts is public and can be viewed by future hosts using tools like AirReview (Chrome browser plugin) prior to future bookings. Note that there are some hosts out there who, for this reason, will actually refuse to rent to guests who have given other hosts less than 5 stars (see, for example, discussion of this on the AirBNB subreddit). We don't operate this way (because we all know that there are actually some really bad hosts out there), but we wanted to pass this information along.
Thank you for your stay and supporting of our small business.
