I've been staying in some AirBnBs recently, and have noticed....I'm not being completely honest with reviews. As a matter of fact, I will either give a 5 star review, or not give a review at all.
Here's my thoughts. In a recent AirBnB that I stayed in, there's definitely some negative things I could have brought up. Not overwhelming, but they were there. But I gave a 5 star review, and only said positive things in it. Why? Because my audience for the review is NOT the general public. It's the AirBnB hosts.
This change in attitude happened after I paid a lot of money to stay in an AirBnB over a holiday with a big family group. It was quite expensive, so I expected the basic standards to at least be met. However, the place was filthy, many things were broken, and it was a miserable experience. I tried talking to AirBnB about it, and they were very unhelpful. They basically just said, "well, leave a negative review".
But I happen to know that negative reviews, on the part of AirBnB customers, do not give a good impression to AirBnB hosts. There are blacklists out there, of bad customers.
I know because of two reasons - one is that some friends of mine stayed at an AirBnB, and once they had arrived there, discovered that they had made a mistake in booking a place that was much further away than they wanted, from the main attraction they wanted to spend time at. Nothing was wrong with the place, they just changed their mind and wanted to have a place that was closer. So, the husband made up a story about the heat not working, so he could get their money back, and they found a new place. (I heard the details from the wife). Anyway, some months after this, they arranged a trip to Europe, and booked multiple stays in AirBnBs. And after the booking was complete, every single one of the AirBnBs cancelled the booking on them.
The other reason I know this is that there was a Wall Street Journal article on these AirBnB blacklists - I think they were on private Facebook groups - and it just clicked in in my head when my friend said that their reservations had been cancelled. It seemed obvious that they had gotten into a blacklist.
Of course, leaving a not-so-nice review on AirBnB is not the same as blatantly lying about your experience in order to get a refund. So I wouldn't expect to be on any blacklist. However, after experiencing the unhelpful AirBnB response to the awful but expensive house, I don't feel like doing them any favors by being completely honest with my reviews. They can hire inspectors to do that job. I don't work for AirBnB, I work for myself, and I'm going to do what benefits me.
So this is why I do reviews this way. If it's an awful place, I'm not going to review it at all, because I don't want to lie. If it's halfway decent, I'll give it a 5 star review and write something nice.
This signals to AirBnB hosts that I'll usually write a great review. They are then much more accommodating to all kinds of requests that I may have. For instance, at my most recent stay, I got both an early check-in and a late check-out.
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