We recently wrote a post about how to deal with negative Airbnb reviews. In it we talked some strategy about mitigating damage from them so you can continue to get bookings. In this post we’re going to talk about the strategies we implemented (and some to try) in order to get more positive reviews from Airbnb guests. Let’s get started!
A Quick Look At Our Results
We’ve been running our listing for over a year and have received 44 reviews on Airbnb with a 4.82 rating total.
We’ve had our fair share of negative reviews, and have used them to tailor our listing and property to make it better for guests and easier to get more positive reviews.
How To Attract 5 Star Reviews On Airbnb
Getting 5 star reviews doesn’t require you to have a gold palace with every amenity imaginable. Our place is pretty standard with a decent amount of amenities. What matters are the categories you see up above in the screenshot of our reviews. You’ll want to pay attention to those and optimize your listing and property in a way that best represents them.
Check-In
The check-in process will vary depending on your type of property. We offered guests the entire place to themselves and didn’t have anything that required a walkthrough. If you are hosting guests in your own home, it may be different.
That being said, we provide guests with their own door code prior to check-in day so that they can get in and out of the house as they please. It doesn’t require a key or any physical interaction with us in order to have access to the property. In other words, it’s very smooth.
No need to run a credit card and stand at the front desk waiting for the concierge to set things up like at a hotel. We made it so our guests have total control of when they want to check-in. And we recommend you do the same.
Cleanliness
This is the real first impression (unless guests get hung up on checking in. But usually very rare) of your home. A guest doesn’t want to stay in a dirty cluttered mess. Make sure you are keeping the property spotless. Guests expect hotel quality clean. If you can’t provide that yourself, hire a professional cleaner!
Accuracy
This one may be the most important piece of the receiving a positive Airbnb review puzzle. If you make your property out to be a palace and it’s a slum, you’re likely to get a negative review. You want to set expectations about your property that are accurate. And it’s okay if your property isn’t perfect as long as you don’t sell it as perfect.
For example, when we first launched we mentioned things about our patio. In all honesty, it’s just some basic patio furniture set out for guests to use. We didn’t put a lot of effort into it. And we sold it as much more than what it was. After a bad review we changed the wording to emphasize how standard it is. Haven’t heard anything bad about the patio since!
Setting expectations and holding to them is very important to guests. They are okay with what your property is as long as you don’t pitch it as something more.
Another note here: be sure that all of the amenities you list are available to guests. Don’t check off that you have a hairdryer if you don’t! You never know what guests are booking for, and if you lie about having an amenity it is a pretty safe way to receive less than 5 stars in their review.
Communication
You’ll want to make sure you give guests everything they need upfront to enjoy your property. That includes any door codes, address, check-in details, and more. There are a few messages you can send that we’ve found help getting good remarks in this area.
- Your initial message. Thank them for choosing your place to stay and let them know they’ll be receiving check-in details in a following message. End with ‘let us know if you have any questions in the meantime!’
- Check-in details. Now’s the time to overcommunicate. Give guests all the necessary details they need for your property and then some. Let guests know where important items are. Any construction in the area? Suggest alternate routes. End with the same question request as the initial message.
- A mid-stay message. We want to check in and make sure everything is going good with the guest. What this does is allow us to air out any negativity BEFORE a guest checks out. Once they’re gone there’s no way to stop them from writing a negative review. Prevent it from happening by fixing the issues during their stay.
- Check-out message. Thank them for staying with you, input any checkout instructions (check under beds, lock the doors, etc.) and ask for a review. Candidly, we do leave out the review ask if we feel the guest didn’t have a great stay. We’d prefer to keep the feedback internal so that we can make adjustments to improve stays without getting penalized. Even a 4 star review is seen as negative on Airbnb. It’s just the unfortunate truth.
Location
You can’t change where your property is located, but you can certainly help reset guest expectations. This goes hand in hand with accuracy.
Another learning point we had was a review regarding our place and its location. Looking at a map, we are just a short walk away from a major road in our town.
Now to be fair, there is a 12 foot grassy berm separating our road from the main one, and I also spent many hours in the house getting it ready and didn’t think it was noisy. Regardless, a guest wasn’t a huge fan of the noise. And they made sure to let us know in their review.
When things like this happen, you can update your listing to be a little more accurate. We emphasized how central the location is in our listing rather than state the issue. You don’t have to directly state issues such as it being noisy (saying “the living room is small” doesn’t sound as nice as “the cozy living room”), but you also don’t want to say your property is one step down from a deprivation tank.
We also mention that the home is private but in an ungated community. We had a couple of guests comment on how we don’t have a fence. Not too much we could do about it without spending thousands of dollars. We could’ve done a better job with this aspect. If we run into the issue again we’ll try a few things out and see what wording works best!
Value
Finally, we are reviewed on the total value of the place. Here’s where it all comes together. If we nail all of the aspects above, we’ll likely get a good review to begin with. But this is where the little things count.
Go through the list of amenities on Airbnb (there are many!) and see what easy things can be added. Take a look at your competitors and at the very least match what they’ve got.
For example, we noticed our competitors didn’t have too much for in-house entertainment. So we added streaming services, board games, and various books to our property. We ended up using a few of our own board games and books so it hardly cost us anything! Now guests have things to do on a rainy day and we’ve just added additional value.
Some other things we added are a work desk, beach gear, and a hair dryer (this one surprisingly got mentioned so we’re putting it here!). Find the little things that matter to guests to help drive the value of your property home.
How To Ask For A Positive Review On Airbnb
So you’ve set up your property to attract positive reviews and are now hosting guests. What next? We like to ask for a positive review in our checkout message. We don’t recommend directly asking for a 5 star review, but we do recommend sharing some information on how the rating system works on Airbnb. We found this helped turn those 4 star reviews into 5 when guests realize it’s not the same as a hotel rating system. Feel free to use this template below:
“Hi [GUEST],
Thank you again for staying at our Airbnb! Just wanted to send a reminder that check-out is at [CHECKOUT TIME] tomorrow.
Before you go, we just ask that you:
1. Place all dishes in the dishwasher
2. Check under the beds for any belongings you might have left behind
3. Lock both doors when you leave ([INSERT INSTRUCTIONS IF DIFFERENT THAN A SIMPLE DEADBOLT])
4. Add any additional instructions here, but keep it short!
We hope you enjoyed your stay and if you did please leave a review (it greatly helps us!). We also like to share a graphic about Airbnb’s rating system since it’s a bit different than traditional hotels.
Thank you again and safe travels,
Jarett
And the graphic we send looks like this (feel free to use as well!):
Get Those Reviews!
These are the tips we used to get more 5 star reviews on Airbnb. If you set up your property right, you’ll set yourself up to get better reviews to begin with. And then you can use messaging to drive it home. We’ll go over how we improved our property using reviews in another post so you can start out better than we did! Stay tuned.