16 ms·

If nearly all Airbnb reviews are positive, does that make them meaningless?

186 points by r_singh 7y ago

r_singh 7y ago
Interesting conclusion made by the authors about why reviews on Airbnb tend to be more positively biased than elsewhere. > Reviews on Airbnb may all appear similar on the surface, but they nonetheless hold power as each one increases the amount of unique information available to other users, potentially reducing uncertainty for future hosts and guests. Our study confirms previous research focusing on star ratings: positive ratings and reviews are clearly the norm on Airbnb . No doubt, many positive reviews are the result of consumer experiences which frequently are genuinely pleasant. Nevetheless users should be mindful that there may be a number of other reasons for the strong positive orientation in so many Airbnb reviews: negative aspects of experience may be minimized, or left unmentioned, in reviews, due to factors such as: sociocultural norms of politeness, established trust among host and guest, review and rating reciprocity, lack of anonymity, as well as Airbnb ’s possible removal of reviews which violating their guidelines. Therefore, less-than-positive experiences may be concealed in lukewarm reviews where reviewers avoid overt negativity: for instance, in comments such as “Interesting stay in a nice neighborhood.” As a result, users should be aware that meaning resides not only in the information that is given, but also in the information that is excluded
- duxup 7y ago
  How many reviews would you have to read to get the unique information from each one? I'm not sure people read that many reviews.
  - andygcook 7y ago
    I'd love a service that gleans interesting tidbits from long reviews and surfaces it all in a summary. I recently went to Curaçao and had a great time. The main reason it was a fun trip is because my girlfriend loves reading reviews and found all the pro-tips in them.
    - duxup 7y ago
      Amazon and other places seem fond of word bubble type information.
- mojuba 7y ago
  This is exactly how I read reviews on Airbnb and Booking.com. "Great location, friendly staff" and nothing else almost definitely means a very shitty place at a nice location. Speaking of which, despite its horrible UI somehow I find Booking.com to be more reliable than Airbnb in this regard. I think Airbnb's game of mutual reviews (that are not published until both parties agree) eventually proves to be disfunctional and useless. Booking.com gives the clients the freedom to say anything without the fear of retaliation. Of course there will always be very unhappy customers even if the place is amazing, but at least you know you can rely on the averages and specifically the wording of the reviews.
  - Gys 7y ago
    Booking asks for the good parts and the bad parts seperately and then only shows the good parts. You really have to look around for the negative parts. I always do that and it is very helpful.
sovok_x 7y ago
I wonder if there were ever attempts to replace reviews with questionnaires with some motivation to fill them like points or micro-discounts. It should provide more standardized flow and force users to disclose more about their experience. I am curious why nobody does this, do I miss some obvious disadvantage?
- r_singh 7y ago
  They should like G2 and some others do for software products. One obvious disadvantage would be that the friction increases drastically, hence reducing the number of reviews.
  - ta999999171 7y ago
    G2 and Capterra et al are gate-keeping cancer. Change my view.
- ortusdux 7y ago
  After my last stay in an airbnb I was asked a series of questions about my stay, facilities, amenities, the neighborhood, etc. They seemed to be tailored in some way or pulled randomly from a larger pool.
  - AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
    I'm sure they tailor it based on the amenities listed. They won't ask you if the pool was clean if the host doesn't advertise having a pool. They probably also tailor it based on historical complaints. If a guest has complained about a particular home being dirty, then future guests are asked more often about cleanliness.
Travell 7y ago
I would not say the ratings are all positive. They are all between about 4.5 and 5 stars. So 4.5 is "worst", 4.75 is "medium" and 5 is "best". The question is if there is a correlation of these and your preferences. I have stayed in 13 AirBnBs last year and rated them in a spreadsheet. Putting them in one of 3 bins: good, ok or bad. The average AirBnB ratings for my bins are: good: 4.78 ok : 4.78 bad : 4.92 So for now the correlation is negative. Not sure what to make of it.
mox1 7y ago
So if you follow the AirBnB host forums at all, anything less than a five star(absolute best possible) review is considered bad. Hosts flip out all the time on 4-star reviews. They loose can "superhost" status and other such things after a couple non-5 star reviews. Giving a 1-star review is probably worse than causing $100+ in damage for some of a lot of these hosts. Hosts will rarely rate guests < 5 stars, simply for fear of retaliation. The problem here is that guests are never told that 5 stars = normal stay. This leads to problems. If AirBnB was more up front about expectations it would make their review system a lot better.
- lordleft 7y ago
  There is a real sense of rating inflation happening here. It makes a 4-starred place seem especially sub-standard, even though it might be the result of a single unreasonable guest, or even a reasonable guest providing a muted review. Yelp is hated in the restaurant industry for similar reasons.
- viceroyalbean 7y ago
  This seems to be a problem with most similar review systems. I believe Uber has similar issues with anything less than 5 stars being considered unacceptable and causing problems for drivers.
- devit 7y ago
  Do users really evaluate like that? For me, it's pretty obvious that rating is arbitrary and depends on how optimistic/perfectionist/obsessive/etc. the reviewer is and that there is not much difference between 4 or 5 stars.
  - burkaman 7y ago
    It's not users, it's the platform itself. AirBnB and other companies like Uber and Lyft will significantly deprioritize you if your average rating isn't very close to 5 stars. Rating your Uber driver 3 stars can significantly affect how many fares they're offered and therefore how much money they can make.
BigBubbleButt 7y ago
It's worse than that - they actively edit/delete negative reviews. https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-reviews/ https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-reviews/
- 76543210 7y ago
  I wonder if they did this with our only negative review. Her comments were rambling but the visible review was vague. We charged 20$/night since it was our first Time doing it. We put in the description, No TV. But the guest asked for a TV and Chromecast. So we moved a spare living room TV upstairs. I went to the store and bought a 35$ Chromecast. We got a negative review for the TV being Dusty. It made us paranoid and we tried extremely hard from that point forward. Got some sort of "best host award" Then our city shut us down.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - YawningAngel 7y ago
    You're a rounding error. Most of Airbnb's volume is professionals letting out dedicated spaces on an ongoing basis
- kelnos 7y ago
  I wonder what their process is for deciding if a review should be removed. I just checked the listing page for a place I stayed at two months ago, and the (poor) review I left was still up, along with a few others.
gnicholas 7y ago
Yep, and don't forget that savvy hosts have ways to prevent you from leaving a review (I don't know how, but I do know that when we had to leave a cockroach-infested unit, we were unable to leave a review). That means that there may be people who want to leave an informative (and bad) review, but are unable to do so.
- goostavos 7y ago
  What do you mean ways to prevent? I did notice that the last review I left isn't actually displayed on the site. It was far from negative, but I did leave 4 stars and note the extraordinary thinness of the walls, as it made hanging out inside of the apartment a bit of a exercise in stealth. Strangely, review was never listed.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    We left a unit due to numerous undisclosed defects (effectively no hot water in shower, cockroaches) and moved into another Airbnb. We were not allowed to leave a review for the problem unit. It was as if we had never stayed there.
  - wolco 7y ago
    The host has to agree to allow your review for it to appear.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      Has to agree to what? I thought reviews were between the reviewer (host/guest) and the platform, and that the reviewed party can only see it after they submit their own review. In my case, there was not even a chance to write a review, not that I wrote a review and it didn't appear anywhere. It seems that Airbnb's policy effectively hides the worst reviews (ones where the guest is moved to another unit and the host terminates the stay in a way that prevents a review from being possible), which contributes to the 'grade inflation' that we see in Airbnb ratings.
    - johnsimer 7y ago
lostgame 7y ago
No, as reviews often mention specific details of the location - even if those details are mostly positive.
jcomis 7y ago
I've written a few negative reviews that were totally honest. They never made it to the profile. So yeah, pretty meaningless.
- seppin 7y ago
  So like yelp
- jcoffland 7y ago
  I had the same experience. I called AirBnB and they acted like it was a really strange occurrence and they would look into it. My review never appeared on the host's page. I have zero trust in AirBnB.
  - why-oh-why 7y ago
    You’re right in having no trust in them. Recently I complained about my price increasing by a couple % once I signed up. Nobody could tell me what the problem was. It took them several messages to finally spill up that they were charging me more due to my country’s taxes. Why is this not clear? Airbnb is so opaque. It would be really easy to list this extra tax but they don’t, so I end up creating a new account.
- dominotw 7y ago
  mine showed up on the profile couple of weeks ago. Its still there.
blululu 7y ago
There is probably a similar issue in academic grade inflation. I'd be curious if professors have any strategies for dealing with this (aside from resorting to more traditional word of mouth approaches).
ggm 7y ago
Is this also a thing on ebay and amazon and ali? I frequently review as "did exactly what they said, delivery on time, no issues" and I do not intend implying negative outcome, I am just choosing to be terse. "the flat was fine, streetscape boring" doesn't mean it was a gang-house in zombie-land.
- rwmj 7y ago
  Amazon have started to ask questions about specific aspects of the product. It seems to be based on AI/ML, I think. I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner which was terrible at picking up hair from the carpet, and when I went to add an Amazon review, it asked me an extra question which was something like "Good at picking up hair?". That must have involved either human interaction, or AI, or it's a question they ask about every vacuum cleaner and I'm showing a cognitive bias.
philshem 7y ago
AirBnB and similar platforms have business models based on quantity of transactions, not quality of experience. If you can obscure an honest assessment of the quality, you can increase the quantity of transactions (at least in the short- and mid-terms). Inflation of ratings and hiding bad reviews are not accidental, that’s their business model.
seppin 7y ago
Yes. I had a nightmare Airbnb over new years (had to leave because my health was deteriorating) but couldn't leave a bad review because of course i'd get one back in retaliation.
- soared 7y ago
  The owner can't see your review until after they review you. But, that won't stop future owners from seeing your bad review.
  - therealx 7y ago
    I think op is saying that they were given another airbnb to replace the bad one, and in doing so, you lose the ability to review the first, bad location.
    - seppin 7y ago
      No we were not. The host knew we were mad at the state of her house, any review made on our part would trigger her retaliation (as she would assume correctly it wouldn't be positive).
rdiddly 7y ago
Is it too early to jump to the conclusion that keeps nagging at me, which is that all the various attempts at reputation management that try to mitigate the basic inherent detachment/uncertainty of the remote, network-enabled business model that we all increasingly depend on, were doomed to fail all along? Mainly I guess I'm thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law
denzil_correa 7y ago
After a stay at an AirBnB, I provided a review. A part of the review question was "What would you suggest as room for improvement?. AirBnB told me they will keep this answer confidential. In a few hours, I had multiple passive aggressive messages from the host about the "confidential" feedback.
- jVinc 7y ago
  I mean, likely AirBnB did relay the information confidentially... but doesn't take a genius to figure out which guest suddenly provided the confidential feedback which was sent on the day after your stay ending.
  - nightcracker 7y ago
    If you shared the content, you didn't keep it confidential. Maybe you are confused with anonymous?
- why-oh-why 7y ago
  Are you sure it said confidential? As far as I know Airbnb has always had a field for “A private note for the owner”. This is “confidential” between you and the owner, as in “not public”, but not between you and Airbnb.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Who did you think the feedback was for? AirBnB employees?
ctingom 7y ago
I wonder if this was why Netflix switched to a thumbs up or thumbs down system.
DantesKite 7y ago
Do you remember how people used to ship blocks of ice a century ago? It was a massive industry. Thousands of pounds shipped over thousands of miles of water. A miracle for its time. The improvements in food storage that came afterward were nothing short of a marvel. The ability to preserve food, to hold it in statis; it bought people time to ship and eat food (a very precious commodity indeed). Looking back now and it seems strange. So much effort for so little gain, relative to what we're capable of doing now. Plug in a refrigerator and you're done. Ice cold for a lifetime. There's still a lot of effort going on, but much of it is hidden—a landscape of electrical grids, mathematics, steel and gold mined from the Earth to create the technology in our kitchens. Most people probably didn't even know things could be much better; that's all they ever knew. The leap to refrigeration was by no means an easy or obvious one. And it seemed to happened slowly as the infrastructure was slowly built up bit by bit over the course of a few decades. Review systems remind me of the ice shipping industry: A marvel for its time, but only for its time. The ability to filter information about locations and products; to make informed choices by aggregating a large set of human opinions is remarkable. You can make choices about things you've never experienced, across a wide variety of domains: Amazon, Airbnb, the App Store, Shopify, Google Play. But it's slow. It's tedious and subject to error. It's easy to miss great insights. It's the lowest common denominator for gaining information about a product, subject to manipulation and noise. Nowadays, whenever I go on a 5-star review website, I'm thankful for the information when I can get it, but I always wonder when my refrigerator is going to arrive.
- lisper 7y ago
  Nowhere is this more evident than when you want to do comparison shopping on an expensive product like a camera or a car. I am actually in the market for a new car right now. I know pretty much what I want. But trying to figure out which product is the best fit for what I want is a nightmare. I go on a manufacturer's web site and it's all marketing. Trying to extract technical details is a chore, and trying to figure out the actual differences between different models and trim lines can range from a nightmare to downright impossible.
  - dawnerd 7y ago
frogpelt 7y ago
I never read positive reviews. If the negative reviews sound whiny, I ignore them. If they bring up valid concerns I stay away from the product/business.
Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
Yes, if your message contains only 1s, then its expected information content (aka Shannon entropy) is zero.
ab8 7y ago
AirBnB takes down negative reviews. I had a poor experience and wrote about my experience. When I asked for a refund, a small percentage was refunded by the host. AirBnB immediately took down my review and then refused to communicate.
hogFeast 7y ago
Goodhart's Law - reviews were useful ten years ago, they are utter trash now because they are totally tainted. This is going to reverse horribly on all the "platform" businesses because they are totally conflicted. As ever, we will go back to the same stuff that people always used: word of mouth, building a trusted brand, etc. All the "successful" unicorns are only distinguished because of their utterly trash brands. Every one of these companies grasped the short-term gain (whilst saying that private capital meant they were long-term thinkers), they hired staff who had no idea how to run a business and were interested only in enriching themselves, and they are basically toxic now. AirBnb, to my mind, are one of the worst. There is no coming back from this.
weinzierl 7y ago
In Germany (and Austria AFAIK) employers are legally obliged to write letters of recommendation for their employees. These letters must be true, complete and favorably. So we have a similar situation where employers want to express their opinion but are required to be benevolent. Does this make letters of recommendation from German companies meaningless? Some will say yes, but regardless of that, what is certain is that the whole situation developed a kind of flourish language that can express at lot about the employee without ever being obviously negative. Some sentences can even be translated into school grades. There are numerous books about this language and even more websites and they all more or less agree, so this language is pretty standardized since at least maybe 30 years. A last interesting point about this language is that some things are said by leaving out certain phrases or words, so you say something by not saying something. Finally I'll give you few examples [+]. May they serve as an example for a future AirBnB language;-) He has specialist knowledge and a healthy dose of self-confidence. Meaning: This person is an arrogant jerk. He's quickly become popular with clients. Meaning: This person can't negotiate at all. She had great empathy for the needs of the staff. Meaning: This person flirted more than they worked. His sociability helped to improve the atmosphere a work. Meaning: This person is an alcoholic. [+] Translated by me to the best of my knowledge. I'll spare you the German originals to avoid clutter. If you want sources shoot me a message, E-mail is in my profile.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  Can you give us some examples of recommendations that would translate favorably?
  - weinzierl 7y ago
    Sure. The ones that come to my mind are little bit harder to translate though, because they rely on nuances in German grammar, but I'll give it a try. To give a person grade A in their performance evaluation you would write: Er erledigte seine Aufgaben stets zu unserer vollsten Zufriedenheit. To give grade B you would just change one word slightly: Er erledigte seine Aufgaben stets zu unserer vollen Zufriedenheit. Both translate into English as: He always completed his tasks to our complete satisfaction. The difference is that in the first sentence the word complete (vollsten) is the superlative which makes as little sense in German as it makes in English and is grammatically incorrect. Grade C would be expressed like this: He completed the tasks assigned to him to our complete satisfaction. Here the word always is missing. Another positive example would be: His behaviour towards superiors, colleagues and customers always set an example. Here the order of superiors, then colleagues and then customers is vital. EDIT: I guess the first example could be translated literally like: "He always completed his tasks to our completest satisfaction." I didn't write that above because I think vollsten in German doesn't sound nearly as bad as completest sounds in English, at least to my ESL ear.
loopz 7y ago
It makes you a slave.
tasssko 7y ago
i am happy to give a 5 star rating if all my expectations were met. That doesn’t mean my words will be flattering to the property or host. Actually i give 5 stars because it delivers on its promise but if there is feedback on the property i add it constructively. Uncomfortable beds, not safe for children are all things other people might find useful. No if all properties have 5 stars there is no value it forces us to read recent comments and be wary of properties that don’t have recent comments.
draw_down 7y ago
Any review I write on any of these platforms will blandly positive, anodyne, uninteresting. I understand why that doesn’t work at scale but I’m not a practitioner of radical honesty, and honesty is not incentivized. Unless something is really egregious, 5 stars every time.
graeme 7y ago
I’ve always found the reviews useful. Never had a bad experience. Reviews will mention downsides even if five stars. And will be superlative if the place is great. They also between 4.5-4.9, with those at the upper end better. Review volume is indicative too. Have stayed in dozens of airbnbs, always had a great stay.
xphilter 7y ago
I wish reviews would change to “would you stay/use this again?” Just yes or no. I’m sure I could get more usefulness out of an aggregation of that. Anyone have an idea of why that would or wouldn’t work?
- jobigoud 7y ago
  It's like this on the host side. At the end of the review process we are asked, "would you recommend this guest?". As a host we can then filter out of instant booking guests that had more than 3 red flags like this.
standardUser 7y ago
The lesson I've learned is to read the words. I'm about to reluctantly give a 5 star review for a place that should get 4 stars. But I understand the system and don't want to be a jerk. What I can do, and have done in the past, is explain the minor flaws in the body of my review. I have been helped immensely by other people doing exactly this, especially with issues some people view as minor, like noise or water pressure.
veselin 7y ago
I observed a similar anti pattern on booking. There, the scores are up to 10, so technically they should be more fine-grained. It looks like this until they ask you to leave a review. Then the questions are like how was the check-in, the check-out, the parking lot and the cleanliness of the room. Now, if 3 out of 4 are good, then you just scored a dirty place 7.5/10. If you put cleanliness on so-so, then it is 8.7. Scores get super inflated to the point that all places are 9/10. But I am guessing there is a reason. These aggregators must look like they contain only top-notch ads. And so all metrics are inflated.
biql 7y ago
The only reviews I bother to look at are negative ones. Reviews may not tell the difference between average, good, and perfect but when something is horribly wrong, it’s usually in the reviews.
aSplash0fDerp 7y ago
Raising a new generation on a sliding moral scale, with no repercussions, as long as it is profitable clears the air(bnb) quite a bit. So on the truth spectrum, are these "modified truths", "eluded to truths" or "curated truths"? There are several example of businesses/industries talking out of both sides of their mouth and a remote orifice. Autotrader buying KBB was similar as well as the recent dotORG domain transaction attempt. Its winner take all. Its just business as usual, though you have to admit... They don't have a public troll problem on their platform. Kudos to them!
toss1 7y ago
So, now we need the scale to be: 1, 2, 3, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8, 5 Then, inflation will require it to be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.90, 4.92....
ineedasername 7y ago
As long as the reviews aren't fake, it doesn't make them useless. It signals most hosts do a decent job, and confers a lot more weight to negative reviews.
neonate 7y ago
If anyone else is wondering where the paper is: scroll down and you should see it. I was confused for a moment, which given their signup buttons is probably the intention.
quaquaqua1 7y ago
If all rows in a database are null, does that make it meaningless? No, it doesn't, if the intended value is for it to be null. However, if the intended value is for it to be something else, then it makes the data incorrect. So, if guests are trying to say every host on Airbnb is amazing, and they are in fact all amazing, then great. But if not, then we need some other way for guests to indicate "host was not acceptable"
phreeza 7y ago
Maybe they should change to a ranking-based system. You don't get asked to rate on your first ever Airbnb booking. On all subsequent stays, you get asked to compare your stay to some randomly selected previous place, better, worse or about the same. Then Airbnb can do some math and induce a score (like ELO).
- ProZsolt 7y ago
  The problem you can't really compare them, as you can't compare a bicycle, a bus, and a car. Sometimes you need one sometimes you need another. I used Airbnb a lot in the early days. My bookings were all over the place. Sometimes I needed an entire house, sometimes the cheapest place in the area that I can afford. A cheap place can be great as a Toyota Corolla is, but if you compare that to a Bugatti it seems less great.
1024core 7y ago
I stayed at an AirBnB once. The house appeared decent, but when the lights were turned off, the cockroaches and other insects came out. We packed up everything and left at 2AM. AirBnB cancelled our reservation and got us some other place; but because our reservation was cancelled, we were not allowed to leave any feedback for it! No wonder it had only good reviews.
- nefitty 7y ago
  Last I knew (less than a year ago), guests can leave reviews up to 24 hrs before check-in if the guest cancels. This is in case the host does something shady before check-in or the stay is a disaster before it ends.
  - 1024core 7y ago
    But they (AirBnB) cancelled our reservation, so there was no way for us to write a review.
greggman3 7y ago
from my POV one problem with these review systems, unlike hotels, if I leave a bad review the next place I try to rent will look at my review history, see I left a bad review, and refuse to rent to me. Hotels don't seem to do that. Partly because they have 100s or 1000s of guests so one bad review means nothing whereas on AirBnB many units are individually owned so those owners have a much higher interest in things like this. I don't know a solution though as there are issues with dishonest reviewers as well. I do know AirBnB removed a bad review I left. The review is reposted on my blog so it's not gone but it is effectively gone.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  Well in this sense AirBnB has a much more powerful tool, the host also reviews the guest. So when we consider hosting you we don't look at the possibly bad reviews you left, we look at the reviews other hosts left on you.
  - greggman3 7y ago
    My reviews as a renter are high and in fact I've often left the place better than I found it. But that doesn't mean I don't feel pressure to not leave a bad review because of the reasons I stated. Case in point, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles for 4 weeks. I arrive and it's clearly a couple struggling to make in in movie production. They tell me they are expecting funding for a documentary but that it's come a week late so they are going to go stay with friends for the next week since they rented the place to me. The place a single sofa in the living room and a king size bed with only sheets. There are no lights in the bed room except a string of christmas lights. The advertised wifi is them leaching off the neighbors which only works in a corner of the apartment and only sometimes. They say I can hang out in the lobby for free wifi but "the lobby" is just an outdoor hallway. They leave and I debate my options since I need to be somewhere for 30 days. I ended up staying. I check the fridge. It's disgusting and sticky inside. The bathroom and shower are also gross, clearly uncleaned for many many months. So I go buy cleaning supplies, clean the entire bathroom, the entire kitchen, and pull out all the removable surfaces from the fridge and clean them in the now clean shower. I then make do with this "crash pad" for 4 weeks. Now the question is, do I leave them a bad review? I think many might see it as my moral obligation to warn others. But I also know it's a struggling couple. Probably 24-28yrs old. IIRC I gave them 4 stars but mentioned the wifi in the review but the review was still "Jack and Jill are a very friendly couple ...." because it just feels wrong to be mean to people you know AND it also feels wrong not to warn others. I don't know if there is a perfect solution. For example maybe I could have talked to them about the issues and asked them to pledge to do better? Maybe AirBnB could let me delay my review until the next person rents and I can ask if the issues were fixed? For example removing the "has wifi" setting. There have been others where I never met the owners in which case bad things were more likely to get me to write a bad review but I still left the worry that if I did I'd be labeled a "user who leaves bad reviews, don't rent to them"
perl4ever 7y ago
With anything, I don't care if 99% of reviews are positive, or even if they are all shills. As long as I can sort with lowest ratings first, then the reviews are useful. I know that there are always going to be nutcases, ex-employees, etc., so I always just am looking for a pattern of bad experiences that come from distinct people. This is the way, the only way, to use online reviews. I would be pleasantly surprised if an academic figured this out.
formerchamp 7y ago
Lots of misinformation in this thread. I host economical listings on airbnb and have had over 300 stays in the last 2 years and get plenty of bad reviews. Half of my guests are repeats who are just there for work and don't bother to review. The other half will leave 2, 3, 4 stars largely because they're not used to being around hispanics and blacks, which triggers airbnb to threaten me with being delisted, which would screw over my returning guests who are happy with the value. I price my listing at the bottom 25% median and clearly state that the neighborhood is multiculturally and socioeconomically diverse. It is a tremendous value for the area but there will always be guests with 5 star tastes and 1 star budget.
mstaoru 7y ago
Airbnb doesn't let you leave a review if your stay was cancelled - which it will be if you experience real problems. Taobao, the largest marketplace in the world that can sell $38 billion worth of stuff per day, has the same problem. That's why it's such a mediocre experience for certain niches, e.g. books. First, you cannot leave a review if you return or even engage in after-sales dispute. Second, since this is a marketplace, you usually do not review the item itself, you cannot leave a bad mark if you don't like your new laptop, because the shop is just a seller. So 99.9999% reviews on Taobao are along the lines of "shipped fast, received in 2 days, not bad, a bit of plastic stench and the box was broken, 5 stars".
yugene 7y ago
Funny, I got to the same conclusions as the authors did by using Airbnb all the time and reading and writing reviews. To see just one bad review is a huge sign not to rent the place, as everyone are so super polite to each other, even despite negative experiences. And hell yeah, I’ve written/read too those lukewarm reviews. They are the most trustworthy, imo.
scruffyherder 7y ago
Just like UBER. You can't leave any meaningful review without retribution. Normal people with lives, jobs and families have too much to lose. It's too easy for people to unleash mob justice.
blackrock 7y ago
I only read the negative reviews, because they seem more objective.
ornornor 7y ago
I’ve had way too many abysmal experiences with Airbnb. To the point where I’ll only stay at hotels or actual BnBs. It’s not that much more expensive. Airbnb prices aren’t what they used to be especially with all the taxes, fees, tips, and other BS hidden charges added and I’d rather pay 10–20% more for a no hassle vacation than spend two days sorting out Airbnb’s shit.
neilwilson 7y ago
These days you need to go on the amount of reviews not the star rating. Declining to give a review is your only weapon against poor service - particularly if you live in a parochial area where everybody knows everybody else. And I suspect social pressure will soon start to target that as well (refusing to deal with people who won’t haven’t got a history of glowing reviews). The way the social dynamics works against the economic reason for reviews is fascinating.
Too 7y ago
"Download with Google", "Download with Facebook"...?! What's wrong with just "Download? Any mirrors?
Jyaif 7y ago
My 2 cents about the positive Airbnb reviews: I stayed at an airbnb place that had bed bugs ( I woke up with bite marks, notice the telltale stains on the sheets, and actually saw some the bed bugs alive). I obviously mentioned it in my overall very positive review since I subsequently spent 2 days washing/freezing all of my families clothes, but Airbnb removed the review saying that it wasn't relevant.
mjd 7y ago
Me: <clicks download link> > academia.edu wants to access your Google Account / mjd@fpuhpx.com / This will allow academia.edu to: / See and download your contacts Me: Nope.

186 points by r_singh 7y ago

Interesting conclusion made by the authors about why reviews on Airbnb tend to be more positively biased than elsewhere. > Reviews on Airbnb may all appear similar on the surface, but they nonetheless hold power as each one increases the amount of unique information available to other users, potentially reducing uncertainty for future hosts and guests. Our study confirms previous research focusing on star ratings: positive ratings and reviews are clearly the norm on Airbnb . No doubt, many positive reviews are the result of consumer experiences which frequently are genuinely pleasant. Nevetheless users should be mindful that there may be a number of other reasons for the strong positive orientation in so many Airbnb reviews: negative aspects of experience may be minimized, or left unmentioned, in reviews, due to factors such as: sociocultural norms of politeness, established trust among host and guest, review and rating reciprocity, lack of anonymity, as well as Airbnb ’s possible removal of reviews which violating their guidelines. Therefore, less-than-positive experiences may be concealed in lukewarm reviews where reviewers avoid overt negativity: for instance, in comments such as “Interesting stay in a nice neighborhood.” As a result, users should be aware that meaning resides not only in the information that is given, but also in the information that is excluded

duxup 7y ago
How many reviews would you have to read to get the unique information from each one? I'm not sure people read that many reviews.
- andygcook 7y ago
  I'd love a service that gleans interesting tidbits from long reviews and surfaces it all in a summary. I recently went to Curaçao and had a great time. The main reason it was a fun trip is because my girlfriend loves reading reviews and found all the pro-tips in them.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Amazon and other places seem fond of word bubble type information.
mojuba 7y ago
This is exactly how I read reviews on Airbnb and Booking.com. "Great location, friendly staff" and nothing else almost definitely means a very shitty place at a nice location. Speaking of which, despite its horrible UI somehow I find Booking.com to be more reliable than Airbnb in this regard. I think Airbnb's game of mutual reviews (that are not published until both parties agree) eventually proves to be disfunctional and useless. Booking.com gives the clients the freedom to say anything without the fear of retaliation. Of course there will always be very unhappy customers even if the place is amazing, but at least you know you can rely on the averages and specifically the wording of the reviews.
- Gys 7y ago
  Booking asks for the good parts and the bad parts seperately and then only shows the good parts. You really have to look around for the negative parts. I always do that and it is very helpful.

sovok_x 7y ago

I wonder if there were ever attempts to replace reviews with questionnaires with some motivation to fill them like points or micro-discounts. It should provide more standardized flow and force users to disclose more about their experience. I am curious why nobody does this, do I miss some obvious disadvantage?

r_singh 7y ago
They should like G2 and some others do for software products. One obvious disadvantage would be that the friction increases drastically, hence reducing the number of reviews.
- ta999999171 7y ago
  G2 and Capterra et al are gate-keeping cancer. Change my view.
ortusdux 7y ago
After my last stay in an airbnb I was asked a series of questions about my stay, facilities, amenities, the neighborhood, etc. They seemed to be tailored in some way or pulled randomly from a larger pool.
- AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
  I'm sure they tailor it based on the amenities listed. They won't ask you if the pool was clean if the host doesn't advertise having a pool. They probably also tailor it based on historical complaints. If a guest has complained about a particular home being dirty, then future guests are asked more often about cleanliness.

Travell 7y ago

I would not say the ratings are all positive. They are all between about 4.5 and 5 stars. So 4.5 is "worst", 4.75 is "medium" and 5 is "best". The question is if there is a correlation of these and your preferences. I have stayed in 13 AirBnBs last year and rated them in a spreadsheet. Putting them in one of 3 bins: good, ok or bad. The average AirBnB ratings for my bins are: good: 4.78 ok : 4.78 bad : 4.92 So for now the correlation is negative. Not sure what to make of it.

mox1 7y ago

So if you follow the AirBnB host forums at all, anything less than a five star(absolute best possible) review is considered bad. Hosts flip out all the time on 4-star reviews. They loose can "superhost" status and other such things after a couple non-5 star reviews. Giving a 1-star review is probably worse than causing $100+ in damage for some of a lot of these hosts. Hosts will rarely rate guests < 5 stars, simply for fear of retaliation. The problem here is that guests are never told that 5 stars = normal stay. This leads to problems. If AirBnB was more up front about expectations it would make their review system a lot better.

lordleft 7y ago
There is a real sense of rating inflation happening here. It makes a 4-starred place seem especially sub-standard, even though it might be the result of a single unreasonable guest, or even a reasonable guest providing a muted review. Yelp is hated in the restaurant industry for similar reasons.
viceroyalbean 7y ago
This seems to be a problem with most similar review systems. I believe Uber has similar issues with anything less than 5 stars being considered unacceptable and causing problems for drivers.
devit 7y ago
Do users really evaluate like that? For me, it's pretty obvious that rating is arbitrary and depends on how optimistic/perfectionist/obsessive/etc. the reviewer is and that there is not much difference between 4 or 5 stars.
- burkaman 7y ago
  It's not users, it's the platform itself. AirBnB and other companies like Uber and Lyft will significantly deprioritize you if your average rating isn't very close to 5 stars. Rating your Uber driver 3 stars can significantly affect how many fares they're offered and therefore how much money they can make.

BigBubbleButt 7y ago

It's worse than that - they actively edit/delete negative reviews. https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-reviews/ https://qz.com/1333242/airbnb-reviews/

76543210 7y ago
I wonder if they did this with our only negative review. Her comments were rambling but the visible review was vague. We charged 20$/night since it was our first Time doing it. We put in the description, No TV. But the guest asked for a TV and Chromecast. So we moved a spare living room TV upstairs. I went to the store and bought a 35$ Chromecast. We got a negative review for the TV being Dusty. It made us paranoid and we tried extremely hard from that point forward. Got some sort of "best host award" Then our city shut us down.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- YawningAngel 7y ago
  You're a rounding error. Most of Airbnb's volume is professionals letting out dedicated spaces on an ongoing basis
kelnos 7y ago
I wonder what their process is for deciding if a review should be removed. I just checked the listing page for a place I stayed at two months ago, and the (poor) review I left was still up, along with a few others.

gnicholas 7y ago

Yep, and don't forget that savvy hosts have ways to prevent you from leaving a review (I don't know how, but I do know that when we had to leave a cockroach-infested unit, we were unable to leave a review). That means that there may be people who want to leave an informative (and bad) review, but are unable to do so.

goostavos 7y ago
What do you mean ways to prevent? I did notice that the last review I left isn't actually displayed on the site. It was far from negative, but I did leave 4 stars and note the extraordinary thinness of the walls, as it made hanging out inside of the apartment a bit of a exercise in stealth. Strangely, review was never listed.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  We left a unit due to numerous undisclosed defects (effectively no hot water in shower, cockroaches) and moved into another Airbnb. We were not allowed to leave a review for the problem unit. It was as if we had never stayed there.
- wolco 7y ago
  The host has to agree to allow your review for it to appear.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    Has to agree to what? I thought reviews were between the reviewer (host/guest) and the platform, and that the reviewed party can only see it after they submit their own review. In my case, there was not even a chance to write a review, not that I wrote a review and it didn't appear anywhere. It seems that Airbnb's policy effectively hides the worst reviews (ones where the guest is moved to another unit and the host terminates the stay in a way that prevents a review from being possible), which contributes to the 'grade inflation' that we see in Airbnb ratings.
  - johnsimer 7y ago

lostgame 7y ago

No, as reviews often mention specific details of the location - even if those details are mostly positive.

jcomis 7y ago

I've written a few negative reviews that were totally honest. They never made it to the profile. So yeah, pretty meaningless.

seppin 7y ago
So like yelp
jcoffland 7y ago
I had the same experience. I called AirBnB and they acted like it was a really strange occurrence and they would look into it. My review never appeared on the host's page. I have zero trust in AirBnB.
- why-oh-why 7y ago
  You’re right in having no trust in them. Recently I complained about my price increasing by a couple % once I signed up. Nobody could tell me what the problem was. It took them several messages to finally spill up that they were charging me more due to my country’s taxes. Why is this not clear? Airbnb is so opaque. It would be really easy to list this extra tax but they don’t, so I end up creating a new account.
dominotw 7y ago
mine showed up on the profile couple of weeks ago. Its still there.

blululu 7y ago

There is probably a similar issue in academic grade inflation. I'd be curious if professors have any strategies for dealing with this (aside from resorting to more traditional word of mouth approaches).

ggm 7y ago

Is this also a thing on ebay and amazon and ali? I frequently review as "did exactly what they said, delivery on time, no issues" and I do not intend implying negative outcome, I am just choosing to be terse. "the flat was fine, streetscape boring" doesn't mean it was a gang-house in zombie-land.

rwmj 7y ago
Amazon have started to ask questions about specific aspects of the product. It seems to be based on AI/ML, I think. I bought a Dyson vacuum cleaner which was terrible at picking up hair from the carpet, and when I went to add an Amazon review, it asked me an extra question which was something like "Good at picking up hair?". That must have involved either human interaction, or AI, or it's a question they ask about every vacuum cleaner and I'm showing a cognitive bias.

philshem 7y ago

AirBnB and similar platforms have business models based on quantity of transactions, not quality of experience. If you can obscure an honest assessment of the quality, you can increase the quantity of transactions (at least in the short- and mid-terms). Inflation of ratings and hiding bad reviews are not accidental, that’s their business model.

seppin 7y ago

Yes. I had a nightmare Airbnb over new years (had to leave because my health was deteriorating) but couldn't leave a bad review because of course i'd get one back in retaliation.

soared 7y ago
The owner can't see your review until after they review you. But, that won't stop future owners from seeing your bad review.
- therealx 7y ago
  I think op is saying that they were given another airbnb to replace the bad one, and in doing so, you lose the ability to review the first, bad location.
  - seppin 7y ago
    No we were not. The host knew we were mad at the state of her house, any review made on our part would trigger her retaliation (as she would assume correctly it wouldn't be positive).

rdiddly 7y ago

Is it too early to jump to the conclusion that keeps nagging at me, which is that all the various attempts at reputation management that try to mitigate the basic inherent detachment/uncertainty of the remote, network-enabled business model that we all increasingly depend on, were doomed to fail all along? Mainly I guess I'm thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell's_law

denzil_correa 7y ago

After a stay at an AirBnB, I provided a review. A part of the review question was "What would you suggest as room for improvement?. AirBnB told me they will keep this answer confidential. In a few hours, I had multiple passive aggressive messages from the host about the "confidential" feedback.

jVinc 7y ago
I mean, likely AirBnB did relay the information confidentially... but doesn't take a genius to figure out which guest suddenly provided the confidential feedback which was sent on the day after your stay ending.
- nightcracker 7y ago
  If you shared the content, you didn't keep it confidential. Maybe you are confused with anonymous?
why-oh-why 7y ago
Are you sure it said confidential? As far as I know Airbnb has always had a field for “A private note for the owner”. This is “confidential” between you and the owner, as in “not public”, but not between you and Airbnb.
jobigoud 7y ago
Who did you think the feedback was for? AirBnB employees?

ctingom 7y ago

I wonder if this was why Netflix switched to a thumbs up or thumbs down system.

DantesKite 7y ago

Do you remember how people used to ship blocks of ice a century ago? It was a massive industry. Thousands of pounds shipped over thousands of miles of water. A miracle for its time. The improvements in food storage that came afterward were nothing short of a marvel. The ability to preserve food, to hold it in statis; it bought people time to ship and eat food (a very precious commodity indeed). Looking back now and it seems strange. So much effort for so little gain, relative to what we're capable of doing now. Plug in a refrigerator and you're done. Ice cold for a lifetime. There's still a lot of effort going on, but much of it is hidden—a landscape of electrical grids, mathematics, steel and gold mined from the Earth to create the technology in our kitchens. Most people probably didn't even know things could be much better; that's all they ever knew. The leap to refrigeration was by no means an easy or obvious one. And it seemed to happened slowly as the infrastructure was slowly built up bit by bit over the course of a few decades. Review systems remind me of the ice shipping industry: A marvel for its time, but only for its time. The ability to filter information about locations and products; to make informed choices by aggregating a large set of human opinions is remarkable. You can make choices about things you've never experienced, across a wide variety of domains: Amazon, Airbnb, the App Store, Shopify, Google Play. But it's slow. It's tedious and subject to error. It's easy to miss great insights. It's the lowest common denominator for gaining information about a product, subject to manipulation and noise. Nowadays, whenever I go on a 5-star review website, I'm thankful for the information when I can get it, but I always wonder when my refrigerator is going to arrive.

lisper 7y ago
Nowhere is this more evident than when you want to do comparison shopping on an expensive product like a camera or a car. I am actually in the market for a new car right now. I know pretty much what I want. But trying to figure out which product is the best fit for what I want is a nightmare. I go on a manufacturer's web site and it's all marketing. Trying to extract technical details is a chore, and trying to figure out the actual differences between different models and trim lines can range from a nightmare to downright impossible.
- dawnerd 7y ago

frogpelt 7y ago

I never read positive reviews. If the negative reviews sound whiny, I ignore them. If they bring up valid concerns I stay away from the product/business.

Iwan-Zotow 7y ago

Yes, if your message contains only 1s, then its expected information content (aka Shannon entropy) is zero.

ab8 7y ago

AirBnB takes down negative reviews. I had a poor experience and wrote about my experience. When I asked for a refund, a small percentage was refunded by the host. AirBnB immediately took down my review and then refused to communicate.

hogFeast 7y ago

Goodhart's Law - reviews were useful ten years ago, they are utter trash now because they are totally tainted. This is going to reverse horribly on all the "platform" businesses because they are totally conflicted. As ever, we will go back to the same stuff that people always used: word of mouth, building a trusted brand, etc. All the "successful" unicorns are only distinguished because of their utterly trash brands. Every one of these companies grasped the short-term gain (whilst saying that private capital meant they were long-term thinkers), they hired staff who had no idea how to run a business and were interested only in enriching themselves, and they are basically toxic now. AirBnb, to my mind, are one of the worst. There is no coming back from this.

weinzierl 7y ago

In Germany (and Austria AFAIK) employers are legally obliged to write letters of recommendation for their employees. These letters must be true, complete and favorably. So we have a similar situation where employers want to express their opinion but are required to be benevolent. Does this make letters of recommendation from German companies meaningless? Some will say yes, but regardless of that, what is certain is that the whole situation developed a kind of flourish language that can express at lot about the employee without ever being obviously negative. Some sentences can even be translated into school grades. There are numerous books about this language and even more websites and they all more or less agree, so this language is pretty standardized since at least maybe 30 years. A last interesting point about this language is that some things are said by leaving out certain phrases or words, so you say something by not saying something. Finally I'll give you few examples [+]. May they serve as an example for a future AirBnB language;-) He has specialist knowledge and a healthy dose of self-confidence. Meaning: This person is an arrogant jerk. He's quickly become popular with clients. Meaning: This person can't negotiate at all. She had great empathy for the needs of the staff. Meaning: This person flirted more than they worked. His sociability helped to improve the atmosphere a work. Meaning: This person is an alcoholic. [+] Translated by me to the best of my knowledge. I'll spare you the German originals to avoid clutter. If you want sources shoot me a message, E-mail is in my profile.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
droopyEyelids 7y ago
Can you give us some examples of recommendations that would translate favorably?
- weinzierl 7y ago
  Sure. The ones that come to my mind are little bit harder to translate though, because they rely on nuances in German grammar, but I'll give it a try. To give a person grade A in their performance evaluation you would write: Er erledigte seine Aufgaben stets zu unserer vollsten Zufriedenheit. To give grade B you would just change one word slightly: Er erledigte seine Aufgaben stets zu unserer vollen Zufriedenheit. Both translate into English as: He always completed his tasks to our complete satisfaction. The difference is that in the first sentence the word complete (vollsten) is the superlative which makes as little sense in German as it makes in English and is grammatically incorrect. Grade C would be expressed like this: He completed the tasks assigned to him to our complete satisfaction. Here the word always is missing. Another positive example would be: His behaviour towards superiors, colleagues and customers always set an example. Here the order of superiors, then colleagues and then customers is vital. EDIT: I guess the first example could be translated literally like: "He always completed his tasks to our completest satisfaction." I didn't write that above because I think vollsten in German doesn't sound nearly as bad as completest sounds in English, at least to my ESL ear.

loopz 7y ago

It makes you a slave.

tasssko 7y ago

i am happy to give a 5 star rating if all my expectations were met. That doesn’t mean my words will be flattering to the property or host. Actually i give 5 stars because it delivers on its promise but if there is feedback on the property i add it constructively. Uncomfortable beds, not safe for children are all things other people might find useful. No if all properties have 5 stars there is no value it forces us to read recent comments and be wary of properties that don’t have recent comments.

draw_down 7y ago

Any review I write on any of these platforms will blandly positive, anodyne, uninteresting. I understand why that doesn’t work at scale but I’m not a practitioner of radical honesty, and honesty is not incentivized. Unless something is really egregious, 5 stars every time.

graeme 7y ago

I’ve always found the reviews useful. Never had a bad experience. Reviews will mention downsides even if five stars. And will be superlative if the place is great. They also between 4.5-4.9, with those at the upper end better. Review volume is indicative too. Have stayed in dozens of airbnbs, always had a great stay.

xphilter 7y ago

I wish reviews would change to “would you stay/use this again?” Just yes or no. I’m sure I could get more usefulness out of an aggregation of that. Anyone have an idea of why that would or wouldn’t work?

jobigoud 7y ago
It's like this on the host side. At the end of the review process we are asked, "would you recommend this guest?". As a host we can then filter out of instant booking guests that had more than 3 red flags like this.

standardUser 7y ago

The lesson I've learned is to read the words. I'm about to reluctantly give a 5 star review for a place that should get 4 stars. But I understand the system and don't want to be a jerk. What I can do, and have done in the past, is explain the minor flaws in the body of my review. I have been helped immensely by other people doing exactly this, especially with issues some people view as minor, like noise or water pressure.

veselin 7y ago

I observed a similar anti pattern on booking. There, the scores are up to 10, so technically they should be more fine-grained. It looks like this until they ask you to leave a review. Then the questions are like how was the check-in, the check-out, the parking lot and the cleanliness of the room. Now, if 3 out of 4 are good, then you just scored a dirty place 7.5/10. If you put cleanliness on so-so, then it is 8.7. Scores get super inflated to the point that all places are 9/10. But I am guessing there is a reason. These aggregators must look like they contain only top-notch ads. And so all metrics are inflated.

biql 7y ago

The only reviews I bother to look at are negative ones. Reviews may not tell the difference between average, good, and perfect but when something is horribly wrong, it’s usually in the reviews.

aSplash0fDerp 7y ago

Raising a new generation on a sliding moral scale, with no repercussions, as long as it is profitable clears the air(bnb) quite a bit. So on the truth spectrum, are these "modified truths", "eluded to truths" or "curated truths"? There are several example of businesses/industries talking out of both sides of their mouth and a remote orifice. Autotrader buying KBB was similar as well as the recent dotORG domain transaction attempt. Its winner take all. Its just business as usual, though you have to admit... They don't have a public troll problem on their platform. Kudos to them!

toss1 7y ago

So, now we need the scale to be: 1, 2, 3, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6, 4.8, 5 Then, inflation will require it to be: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4.90, 4.92....

ineedasername 7y ago

As long as the reviews aren't fake, it doesn't make them useless. It signals most hosts do a decent job, and confers a lot more weight to negative reviews.

neonate 7y ago

If anyone else is wondering where the paper is: scroll down and you should see it. I was confused for a moment, which given their signup buttons is probably the intention.

quaquaqua1 7y ago

If all rows in a database are null, does that make it meaningless? No, it doesn't, if the intended value is for it to be null. However, if the intended value is for it to be something else, then it makes the data incorrect. So, if guests are trying to say every host on Airbnb is amazing, and they are in fact all amazing, then great. But if not, then we need some other way for guests to indicate "host was not acceptable"

phreeza 7y ago

Maybe they should change to a ranking-based system. You don't get asked to rate on your first ever Airbnb booking. On all subsequent stays, you get asked to compare your stay to some randomly selected previous place, better, worse or about the same. Then Airbnb can do some math and induce a score (like ELO).

ProZsolt 7y ago
The problem you can't really compare them, as you can't compare a bicycle, a bus, and a car. Sometimes you need one sometimes you need another. I used Airbnb a lot in the early days. My bookings were all over the place. Sometimes I needed an entire house, sometimes the cheapest place in the area that I can afford. A cheap place can be great as a Toyota Corolla is, but if you compare that to a Bugatti it seems less great.

1024core 7y ago

I stayed at an AirBnB once. The house appeared decent, but when the lights were turned off, the cockroaches and other insects came out. We packed up everything and left at 2AM. AirBnB cancelled our reservation and got us some other place; but because our reservation was cancelled, we were not allowed to leave any feedback for it! No wonder it had only good reviews.

nefitty 7y ago
Last I knew (less than a year ago), guests can leave reviews up to 24 hrs before check-in if the guest cancels. This is in case the host does something shady before check-in or the stay is a disaster before it ends.
- 1024core 7y ago
  But they (AirBnB) cancelled our reservation, so there was no way for us to write a review.

greggman3 7y ago

from my POV one problem with these review systems, unlike hotels, if I leave a bad review the next place I try to rent will look at my review history, see I left a bad review, and refuse to rent to me. Hotels don't seem to do that. Partly because they have 100s or 1000s of guests so one bad review means nothing whereas on AirBnB many units are individually owned so those owners have a much higher interest in things like this. I don't know a solution though as there are issues with dishonest reviewers as well. I do know AirBnB removed a bad review I left. The review is reposted on my blog so it's not gone but it is effectively gone.

jobigoud 7y ago
Well in this sense AirBnB has a much more powerful tool, the host also reviews the guest. So when we consider hosting you we don't look at the possibly bad reviews you left, we look at the reviews other hosts left on you.
- greggman3 7y ago
  My reviews as a renter are high and in fact I've often left the place better than I found it. But that doesn't mean I don't feel pressure to not leave a bad review because of the reasons I stated. Case in point, I rent a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles for 4 weeks. I arrive and it's clearly a couple struggling to make in in movie production. They tell me they are expecting funding for a documentary but that it's come a week late so they are going to go stay with friends for the next week since they rented the place to me. The place a single sofa in the living room and a king size bed with only sheets. There are no lights in the bed room except a string of christmas lights. The advertised wifi is them leaching off the neighbors which only works in a corner of the apartment and only sometimes. They say I can hang out in the lobby for free wifi but "the lobby" is just an outdoor hallway. They leave and I debate my options since I need to be somewhere for 30 days. I ended up staying. I check the fridge. It's disgusting and sticky inside. The bathroom and shower are also gross, clearly uncleaned for many many months. So I go buy cleaning supplies, clean the entire bathroom, the entire kitchen, and pull out all the removable surfaces from the fridge and clean them in the now clean shower. I then make do with this "crash pad" for 4 weeks. Now the question is, do I leave them a bad review? I think many might see it as my moral obligation to warn others. But I also know it's a struggling couple. Probably 24-28yrs old. IIRC I gave them 4 stars but mentioned the wifi in the review but the review was still "Jack and Jill are a very friendly couple ...." because it just feels wrong to be mean to people you know AND it also feels wrong not to warn others. I don't know if there is a perfect solution. For example maybe I could have talked to them about the issues and asked them to pledge to do better? Maybe AirBnB could let me delay my review until the next person rents and I can ask if the issues were fixed? For example removing the "has wifi" setting. There have been others where I never met the owners in which case bad things were more likely to get me to write a bad review but I still left the worry that if I did I'd be labeled a "user who leaves bad reviews, don't rent to them"

perl4ever 7y ago

With anything, I don't care if 99% of reviews are positive, or even if they are all shills. As long as I can sort with lowest ratings first, then the reviews are useful. I know that there are always going to be nutcases, ex-employees, etc., so I always just am looking for a pattern of bad experiences that come from distinct people. This is the way, the only way, to use online reviews. I would be pleasantly surprised if an academic figured this out.

formerchamp 7y ago

Lots of misinformation in this thread. I host economical listings on airbnb and have had over 300 stays in the last 2 years and get plenty of bad reviews. Half of my guests are repeats who are just there for work and don't bother to review. The other half will leave 2, 3, 4 stars largely because they're not used to being around hispanics and blacks, which triggers airbnb to threaten me with being delisted, which would screw over my returning guests who are happy with the value. I price my listing at the bottom 25% median and clearly state that the neighborhood is multiculturally and socioeconomically diverse. It is a tremendous value for the area but there will always be guests with 5 star tastes and 1 star budget.

mstaoru 7y ago

Airbnb doesn't let you leave a review if your stay was cancelled - which it will be if you experience real problems. Taobao, the largest marketplace in the world that can sell $38 billion worth of stuff per day, has the same problem. That's why it's such a mediocre experience for certain niches, e.g. books. First, you cannot leave a review if you return or even engage in after-sales dispute. Second, since this is a marketplace, you usually do not review the item itself, you cannot leave a bad mark if you don't like your new laptop, because the shop is just a seller. So 99.9999% reviews on Taobao are along the lines of "shipped fast, received in 2 days, not bad, a bit of plastic stench and the box was broken, 5 stars".

yugene 7y ago

Funny, I got to the same conclusions as the authors did by using Airbnb all the time and reading and writing reviews. To see just one bad review is a huge sign not to rent the place, as everyone are so super polite to each other, even despite negative experiences. And hell yeah, I’ve written/read too those lukewarm reviews. They are the most trustworthy, imo.

scruffyherder 7y ago

Just like UBER. You can't leave any meaningful review without retribution. Normal people with lives, jobs and families have too much to lose. It's too easy for people to unleash mob justice.

blackrock 7y ago

I only read the negative reviews, because they seem more objective.

ornornor 7y ago

I’ve had way too many abysmal experiences with Airbnb. To the point where I’ll only stay at hotels or actual BnBs. It’s not that much more expensive. Airbnb prices aren’t what they used to be especially with all the taxes, fees, tips, and other BS hidden charges added and I’d rather pay 10–20% more for a no hassle vacation than spend two days sorting out Airbnb’s shit.

neilwilson 7y ago

These days you need to go on the amount of reviews not the star rating. Declining to give a review is your only weapon against poor service - particularly if you live in a parochial area where everybody knows everybody else. And I suspect social pressure will soon start to target that as well (refusing to deal with people who won’t haven’t got a history of glowing reviews). The way the social dynamics works against the economic reason for reviews is fascinating.

Too 7y ago

"Download with Google", "Download with Facebook"...?! What's wrong with just "Download? Any mirrors?

Jyaif 7y ago

My 2 cents about the positive Airbnb reviews: I stayed at an airbnb place that had bed bugs ( I woke up with bite marks, notice the telltale stains on the sheets, and actually saw some the bed bugs alive). I obviously mentioned it in my overall very positive review since I subsequently spent 2 days washing/freezing all of my families clothes, but Airbnb removed the review saying that it wasn't relevant.

mjd 7y ago

Me: <clicks download link> > academia.edu wants to access your Google Account / mjd@fpuhpx.com / This will allow academia.edu to: / See and download your contacts Me: Nope.