Airbnb reviews often paint a misleadingly rosy picture because guests face this real fear. Why Airbnb’s system pressures travelers into silence or subtly hinting at problems rather than speaking the full truth.
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62 thoughts on “Why Airbnb Reviews Are Mostly Fake: A Hawaii Traveler’s Perspective”
The mutual review and pre approval systems are extremely important. I lost my primary residence and screen guests carefully. The risk to the guest of a stay is small compared to the risk of damage to my home.
Guests also have the mistake impression this is an extremely profitable undertaking. It isn’t. The nightly equivalent of my mortgage exceeds what guests pay. I do it because it allows me to travel more often and I’ve had some amazing guests who were a pleasure to meet.
I find this article to be ridiculously dismissive of the host perspective.
I agree that the Airbnb review system is flawed, but the mutual review of hosts and guests is a great feature. The biggest improvement would be to allow more granularity in ratings. Why a 4 or a 5? Why not allow in-between ratings such as 4.7? Since guests are requested to rate their stay on specific factors (e.g., “value” “corresponded with the description” etc.) why are they also required to give an overall rating? As a host, I routinely message my guests the day after they check in, making sure that everything is OK and to let me know if anything needs fixing. I don’t want to learn about a problem for the first time in a public review. “Stuff happens,” but it’s the host’s response to a situation that’s important – not the “stuff” itself.
Especially if your property is well booked. I need to do that more with mine. Thanks for the reminder.
It’s interesting the conclusion is that they would stay at this place again because it was a great value, after nitpicking everything. Low lighting in the living room?
Airbnbs are not hotels. You want a hotel experience for less than hotel price? Do you think owners are just awash in money? The small owners among us do this to help us pay our bills. We do what we can to keep our properties in good shape. Maybe the owner likes low lighting? Maybe that front step is a quirk they don’t think much about. It is mentally and physically exhausting to run a STR. At the end of the day, people expect a 5 star Ritz experience for less than a mid-range hotel. Things get broken All the time – glasses, mirrors, chairs. Sheets & towels get stained or disappear. I love making fun experiences for my guests. I screen because I want to know people will enjoy it, not rip it apart.
The general fact that more people post complaints than those who were satisfied post, transcends all types of reviews, on all platforms, thus a platform where the highest percentage of reviews are positive is suspicious. It’s just not human nature to go out of our way to say we were satisfied, but stellar service or subpar we’re probably telling anyone who will listen.
Reviews of vacations are not the same as reviews of phones or even restaurants. An Hawaiian airbnb review gives a person a chance to relive the vacation of a lifetime and I think the five star reviews are an honest expression of gratitude and satisfaction. People who did not like their lodgings probably choose to leave none at all.
I agree. Many 5 star reviews discuss all the wonderful things
they did during their vacation and barely mention their lodging.
I try to split the difference on reviews, where I leave a 5 star rating but also a lot of details on my experience in the public review text, always using a positive or objective spin such as “the beautiful living room would have been even better if the lighting weren’t so dim” and “ the stairs to the loft were so steep and narrow I couldn’t allow my kids to use them, and would be unusable by someone with mobility issues, but was fine for the agile adults in our group.” I assume hosts don’t retaliate against negative text comments, but who knows?
>>Move to all instant-book properties. <<
From the host's point of view, this policy can be problematical, because the host may need to filter out some types of travelers who would not be happy with their particular rental. For instance, business travelers or pre-wedding bacchanals.
In addition, pre-booking correspondence tends to reinforce the idea that it's not a hotel someone is booking but a privately owned residence, condo or whatever, which makes for much better stays from the host's point of view.
Good day~ I would like to comment on ‘ratings’ and the warping of reliable information to make informed decisions. This is caused by the E-suite obession with ‘only’ 5 star ratings and creating a culture of ‘please the boss’, iso of accurate ratings to identify the issues so solutions can be found. I hear this all the time from a wide range of buisnesses, please rate us 5 or 10 or whatever the top mark is or we will be penalized. This sets up a falsity loop that never addresses the core issues. As a service quality professional, I always advised my clients that your numbers are your numbers. If you disguise them iso of being honest, in the long run you will continue to fail! Letting ratings fall where they may is equivalent to transperancy, as you cannot fix a problem without knowledge and data. Just be real and willing to improve. Cheers
As a host, my biggest beef is that you are rated on like 6 different metrics 1-5 stars, But then the guest can leave whatever overall star review they want. So, for instance one guest rated 5 of the 6 metrics as 5 stars. One metric “value” was 4 stars. So what was my overall rating? 4 stars. Maybe some guests do not know how averaging numbers work. Metrics like “value” should be ommited because no kidding they want a room cheaper “value” than what it is listed at!
“Mostly” fake? Is that a statistical calculation based on actual data … or an opinion? There is no such thing as a perfect review system and certain individuals will inevitably try to abuse any system to their advantage, but it’s wildly misleading to claim that your limited personal experiences represent a definitive summary of the overall reality of a global platform. If you had a bad experience at your recent stay in not-Hawaii, and you feel compelled to write a negative story on your platform … do that. But it’s neither accurate nor relevant to extrapolate your experience there to the overall state of travel accommodations in Hawaii. A headline that says “we had a bad experience” would be totally appropriate … but can you provide actual proof of your statement that “most” reviews on AirBnB are fake?