Airbnb Reviews

How it’s done currently and what else could be done?

UPDATE 9/22:

On having a closer look at the Airbnb Blog linked in the 7/15 update, I noticed that after 14 days, the reviews by the host or guest are revealed to the other person and the community, even if the other person does not review himself / herself.

This is a good way to tackle the issue that could potentially arise if this wasn’t the case (as expressed in the 7/15 update)!

UPDATE 7/15:

Airbnb Products recently published a post on its blog regarding the new review system. You can read it here.

There are a few changes — the host’s and the guest’s review is not revealed to one another and the public unless both decide to review, the number of days to review has been reduced to 14 days and private feedback can be given to the host by the guest (but not the other way round).

So, this is not a one-sided system as I had read and written about on June 30. While that’s a good step, what happens when either the host or guest knows that they have been a “bad” host / guest and that the other person will definitely have complaints? They can simply choose not to review the other person and therefore, a bad review on their name never makes it to the website! I am not certain if Airbnb has a way to tackle such cases.

UPDATE 6/30:

A reddit post regarding the simultaneous revealing of reviews for guests and hosts was brought to my attention. You can read it here. As per the post, Airbnb is rolling out an update where the guest can see the host’s review only when he / she posts a review (or the 14 day limit on submitting a review expires). As mentioned in my entry below, this is a step in the right direction. A question that still persists is why this update is limited to one side of the guest-host interaction? Shouldn’t a host be not able to see a guest’s review unless he / she reviews the guest?

With this update, the host would have no incentive to leave the guest a review once he / she receives a positive review from the guest. And if he / she receives a negative review, then one can be very certain that there will be an equivalent response. There is also the possibility that this one-sided update is because guest reviews aren’t valued as highly as host reviews are. This would be unfortunate as it would imply that making connections, which is Airbnb’s aim, has taken a step back. Rather, rating places akin to hotel reviews has taken precedence.

The review system forms an essential part of purchasing items online, ranging from products on Amazon to Netflix movies to booking rooms on travel websites and even ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft. Most of these rely on a couple of inputs: a 5-star based rating system for the product / experience, followed by an optional text field to give further comments / feedback.

Airbnb had a similar system initially (with the exception that you could provide private feedback to the host). However, it was turned into a more in-depth review system a few years ago. You can read more about the changes made here. In brief, it added the following fields to provide a 5-star based rating(ratings for both guest and host in bold):

• Location
• Accuracy
• Value
• Communication
• Checkin process
• Cleanliness
• Observance of house rules (for the host only)

The final part is a thumbs up or down on whether you would recommend the place / guest.

Initial Thoughts

Honestly, it looks pretty good at first glance. We can see that it does a better and a more thorough job than a simple overall 5-star rating system and an optional text field. It separates different aspects of a stay very well and thereby, your experiences with one aspect does not impact the rating of the others. For instance, you may have stayed at a home that ticked off all the boxes above besides Check-in — your host made you wait for 3 hours despite knowing your arrival time. While earlier, that negative experience may have made you vent out all your anger in the overall rating, you can now express your views just for that specific field independent of the others. It does not ruin the host’s overall rating to the extent it may have earlier. In addition, the host realizes that he needs to take care of Check-in in the future.

Another feature of the review system is that it works both ways — you review the host and the host can also write about how you were as a guest. This is an essential ingredient of such a service that relies on both sides and therefore further addresses the aim of Airbnb to create meaningful and healthy connections.

Let’s have a closer look at certain aspects of this rating system.

#1 Does reviewing guests really empower hosts?

I recently came across a post on Quora (link provided below) where the above question was brought up by an Airbnb host. So, first let’s have a look at how reviewing guests works on Airbnb. It is actually pretty similar to host ratings —

You have a textbox for publicly visible feedback, a private feedback field and few 5-star based ratings. Two things that draw my attention immediately are: Why is the 5-star rating system private? Also, why can this review get published even before the host is reviewed by the guest?

For the first point, Airbnb mentions here that the quantitative feedback is

presented back in a digestible form and also incorporated into our search ranking algorithm, making it easier to determine the best space for you.

But, what happens to this quantitative data when it comes to guests? I do not see it being displayed on my profile. And, it is not used in any algorithm (that I know of) that is useful for the hosts. So where exactly does it go?Wouldn’t it be nice if it showed up in everyone’s profile, even if he / she just uses the service as a guest? Since Airbnb does ask the hosts for it, it is obvious that they utilize it for some purpose. However currently, they are neither visible nor obvious.

Moving onto the second point mentioned above, I was very surprised that when a host from a recent stay reviewed me, it was visible to me even when I had not posted a review for him. There are two sides to this as well —

From the guests perspective, it is tricky when the host reviews you before you do so yourself. For instance, I spent a weekend in LA earlier this month and received a positive review from my host. Now, when it was my turn to pen down a review for the host, there was a slight hesitation in writing something negative about the host and his place. After all, he had good things to say about me. I did not want to be an a** and appear overly critical about the stay. On the other hand, if a guest receives a negative response from the host, why would he / she leave a positive review for the stay? Chances are that there was some tension between the host and the guest during the stay, and so the guest would have a bone to pick with the host as well. In such a case, we all know who is more likely to suffer from the negative reviews — the host.

Now from the host’s perspective, this sentence from the Quora post linked below sums it up:

As a host I often have the need to leave a positive review to bad guests I have hosted only to protect my business avoiding a negative review from my guest if he wants to have his revenge.

And then, the other case where the host reviews the guest after being reviewed himself is pretty similar — why would the host want to leave a negative review for a guest who left a positive review for him?

So, what can be done about this?

As for the curious case of the invisible 5-star rating for the guest, it should be visible on the guest’s public profile. No one cares about it besides a future host, but since Airbnb makes healthy connections one of its priorities, it would only be fair if guests are rated on similar grounds as hosts. In addition, the private feedback that the previous hosts provide for the guest should be made available to future hosts before they approve a stay. In reality, this is a more delicate matter as it is confidential information about the guest that gets revealed. Interaction between hosts and guests from a previous unrelated stay is definitely a privacy issue.

However, one can also argue that the host deserves to know as much as possible about the stranger that he is going to let into his house. Right? We aren’t talking about an electronic device, money or even a car — it’s about your home, possibly one the biggest investments you have made in your life. To add to that, since many of the listings are shared apartments, the issue of safety cannot be stressed enough.

Now, when we talk about the guest reviews and their timings, a quick fix that immediately comes to mind is: Don’t make the reviews (guest or host) visible until and unless both parties review one another. It is so apparent that it makes one wonder why this is not what’s done in the first place. This solution also ensures that hosts will review their guests more often, thereby making Airbnb profiles more rich and informative. But before we rush to this conclusion, there are more layers to this problem that we need to understand. For example, if a host knows that he was a “bad” host, then he just won’t leave a review, knowing that he will definitely receive a negative review from the guest. The same can be said for a “bad” guest.

Rather, in my opinion, a good way of tackling this would be to publish a review from either side after a certain number of days irrespective of whether the other party reviewed you. You would receive a notification that you had been reviewed, thereby providing an incentive for you to leave a review as well, knowing that whether or not you do that, a review about you will be published soon. But, for this system to work, a crucial aspect that would need to be changed would be the duration permitted to leave a review. 30 days is a bit of a stretch for this solution to work — especially when you think about new listings that will attract more guests only if it has reviews. A few variants could be tried out — 7 days does not seem enough and 21 days leans more towards being too much. For me, 15 days sounds like a good middle ground to allow such a system to work.

#2 Do review responses serve any purpose?

To be continued in a future entry! Thanks for reading.