No more bookings since “Highest/Lowest Reviews” feature!

[Florencia0]

My listing didn´t get any new reservation since the new feature that Airbnb launched in which your reviews are grouped in two columns by the Highest and Lowest ratings they got. From how I understand, the Lowest section gathers reviews that got ratings from 1 to 3 stars (Overall Experience). The Highest section gathers the rest.

The thing is that the majority of my guests gave me 5 stars in more than 200 reviews, a few subset of about 8% gave me 4 stars (but comments are good) and only one girl gave me 3 stars (it was 2 years ago). That girl gave me the most retaliatory comment I got. It was terrible. She said the mattress hurt her back, that the apartment felt cramped and a full set of lies just to damage my reputation. It was horrible and she was a person full of hate.

When I got her review (2 years ago) I wasn't very worried because she was the ONLY one saying things like that about my apartment and the next reviews will take relevance to her dirty words. But now that Airbnb is highlighting her review as the first and only one from the group of Lowest review, every user will read it, and they will certainly doubt about staying with me. In fact, I was having healthy bookings until this feature was released.

I´m so worried about this feature and I don´t understand how Airbnb could think this is good. By sure not for hosts, but how it could be would for guests. A review left years ago is totally DATED and the ones under the group from 1 to 3 stars came from the most retaliatory guests. I know she was a bad guest but the user interested in staying with me don't, so when he reads her comment, he will doubt about staying with me. Her review is DATED.

I have check how this new feature might work in other listings and I find a lot of them under my same situation. Superhosts with a lot of amazing listings paired with just one or two terrible reviews from the most retaliatory guests highlighted under the Lowest review group for a quick access to the user that is interested in reading the worst of our listings. How could this be a good thing?

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Florencia0 

It can not .

But then again, how can be a good thing to stimulate guests to leave a bad review by highlighting things like noise, smell etc...?

Or the idea of kids under 2 y.o. for free?

Or refunding 100% to any froudulent jerk who says he found bedbugs (or whatever) , without giving any evidence of it?

Or to cancel "property search" and "house swaping" ?

etc...

sometimes it seems to me that Airbnb is a playground for young programmers. They get up in the morning with some new, random, colorfull idea and then play with it... without any vision what they want to achieve at the end ... and why?

And when something has a bug (like calendar) they don't bother to fix it .. because fixing things is so booooring... let's play something new ... like kids...

[Jane255]

I hate the feature that summarizes guests comments. A guest commented "no odor" so now it says guest mentioned ODORS. If a guest says the flowers smelled nice, it will now highlight that a guest mentioned ODORS. I agree, programmers going crazy.

[Ange2]

@Florencia0  @Branka-and-Silvia0    Removal of this feature has been put on the VOICE Suggestion section, would be great if everyone who agreed could thumb it up in the VOICE section and add their 2 cents.  https://community.airbnb.com/t5/Host-Voice/Discontinue-lowest-review/idi-p/345277

[J-Renato0]

@Florencia0@Branka-and-Silvia0

In the last to days I have had to bookings for a property that have two 3 stars reviews and lots of 4 and 5 stars reviews.

I have to be honest, and I must say I am not convinced that this new system to order reviews by tab is bad.

To me it seems ok!  I do not want to say to the world that my property is perfect  or that it does not have any cons.

Moreover, I think that a guest will compare the number of great reviews against the number of lowest reviews and will decide.

I do not want guests to think that my property is "Shangri La". I want the guest just to think they are booking a good place that fits their needs, and to know this they have to see pictures, read the descriptions and reviews.

If there is some malicious reviews, the guests will perceive it.

When reviews are displayed in the tab Lowest Reviews, it show the date of the review as well.

How could this system be a good thing?

The guest will be able to distinguish clearly what is good from what is bad. Lets suppose that a host has tons of bad reviews, and only the last review it was a good one! It could fool the guest if there was not the tab Lowest Reviews! The guest could think that all the rest of reviews are good!

If a host receive a malicious review, and there was not the tab Lowest Reviews, it could harm the host!

To summarize, the guest can conclude that:

1. If the host has lot of good reviews and few lowest review, the place and host are good, considering pros and cons.
2. If the host has lots of bad reviews and few highst reviews, then there is a problem with the place or with the host.

It is my very honest point of view!

[Christabel-and-Rita0]

"a host with lot of bad reviews and the top one is good"

No! that cannot happen, airbnb already has a system in place to suspend accounts that get constantly bad reviews and believe me even getting 4 stars is considered bad for airbnb - they expect an average of not less than 4.4 stars - so you must constantly get 5 stars 

so the scope of this lowest review tab is to punish the host and even one bad review will remain on top and for all to see, forever

it is really ridiculous! 

[J-Renato0]

>>> "No! that cannot happen, airbnb already has a system ... "

Put yourself in the shoes of some guest that are in search of accommodation. 

Well, from the point of view of the guest, they have the right to see if some guest rated badly some property and why.

If a property has more than 100 reviews, and if the guests want to see pros and cons, it is very difficult to see them without ordering it.

If there is a malicious reviews, the guest will be able to distinguish it. 

Moreover, the date of the reviews are seen in the tab Lowest reviews.

And yes, if the host has lots of bad reviews, Airbnb may suspend the listing, but it is necessary to reach a threshold.

While it does not happen, if the host got one great review it will appear firstly for the potencial guest, and it may fool the guest.

I know a person who is superhost. She is in process of booking accomodation for a travell, and she told that she thought this feature useful to her. 

Ok, from the point of view of many hosts it is not good. They think that ordering coments is not a good idea.

We will never reach an agreement on this matter. Anyone can have your own opinion.

It is just my opinion.

[Christabel-and-Rita0]

my point is that Airbnb starts to suspend accounts when the average reaches 4.0 stars (which is not really bad). When the account is between 4.0 and 4.4 stars rating, you start to get warning that  your account will be suspended once it drops to 4.0 stars. So to be safe you have to keep a rating of 4.5 stars or more.

so what i mean is, with this system of suspension in place, Airbnb already has a rigid system to keep bad hosts away. Those that have a rating of 4.5 or more and are still on the system... means that they get a low rating only sporiadically and most probably due to a difficult guest and not really because of the host. The problem was the host/accomodation would have been suspended by the system.

so I find it strange that airbnb still wants to show to all potential guests those sporiadic bad ratings to the hard working good hosts that managed to keep a 4.5 rating or more. With some reviews that are several months/ years old and not longer relevant

[Annette33]

@Florencia0 , you got great reviews, you're a super host, you're booked very often - you got nothing to worry about! I agree with @Branka-and-Silvia0 that it feels at times as if those programmers at Airbnb are just playing around, with no idea or concept of what they want to achieve, and then they are on to the next thing. Aggravating!

As for this new feature you're unhappy with ( about the highest and lowest rankings being displayed)  going to your place and trying to check up on it - I could NOT see it when on the Airbnb app!  (here in the US it doesn't seem to be rolled out yet anyways, but I Understand they are testing it in several countries.)  I did find it though when I signed into Airbnb via their web site. So next to 232 highest it lists 1 lowest for you - that in itself already tells the story - and that review wasn't even that bad! So really, there is no doubt in my mind that that one review - people even have to find it, and only via the web site, not the app - has NO influence on your bookings!

Just relax about it

[Vali1]

Annette..telling someone to "just relax about it" is minimalistic and rude. Please don't Ttempt to imagine those of us who have a visible lack in enquire and bookings because of one malicious review

[Andrea9]

@Vali1

If you look at @Annette33's wording, you'll see that she in fact wasn't being rude or in any way not understanding of those with a visible lack in enquiries and bookings at all. 

For the record, she was talking in this case directly to a host with hundreds of bookings and good reviews to not worry and relax about a single bad one. Annette is a pillar of the CC and contributes with a lot of wisdom and common sense and would never be that snarky.

[Andrea9]

Is this  feature even still used on the site version you use?  

They've now introduced a different questionable version in many areas - namely that of first posting all reviews of the country that the viewer is in.  Meaning it could be as many reviews as fit on the first page and all from bygone years, looking as if host was inactive!

[Vali1]

It is absolutely NOT our imagination. Both bookings and enquires are down. 

[Dev4]

@Florencia0

I completely agree with you and thank you for initiating this conversation. I received a 3 star review recently where a guest complained about noise from street level at 5 am. I immediately called up Airbnb customer centre and the agent said that the review was customer's experience and it cannot be changed since none of us (Airbnb or myself) were in the unit at 5 am to validate the claim.

Since the review, I find that the inquiries and booking requests have dried up. I am a superhost with over 50 positive reviews.

I am definitely going to voice my concern and I hope Airbnb listens to it. 

[Jp13]

I'm worried about this too.  I started hosting last year and had to turn away most of my requests because I had too many.  I reopened my account again for May, which is start of peak travel season to Seattle, and have gotten no requests.  The last people that stayed with me were horrible.  They lost then made unauthorized copies of keys (refused to pay for replacing locks), were really dirty, and wrote a horrendous review and rating that brought down my overall score.  I can see that people have viewed my listing, but no one is booking which is making me extremely nervous.