STR Site - Forum General Advice « Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next » A Short Term Rental (STR) Forum Community

[kettle4]

I have been hosting for a year and only found out recently that guests without reviews (but joined for years) are the worst ones.


We had a guest yesterday and she joined 5 years ago. 0 reviews. Basically asked us to leave our house to make room for her for two days, and just stayed past check-out time without asking.

Same with other 0 review guests, she is not tidy. Walked in dirty shoes for our shoe-free carpet, left knifes with butter on the counter, threw used tissue paper on the ground… anyone else have the same observations?

[Bravado12]

You definitely need to do a vetting process and ask some questions, but most of my bookings have been from guests with no reviews. I just reach out and explain the airbnb ethos of respect, etc, go over rules clearly, explain that I'm not a large corporate hotel chain, and ask them if they still think they are a good fit for my place.

I'm newer to the platform, so someone took a risk with me too. Granted, my price point will weed out most, but it's also a place where someone could try to throw a large party. You simply need to work on communication if accepting guests with no prior reviews or information. I'm sure during the busy summer season someone will do something stupid but I'm sitting on tens of thousands in reservations from guests with no prior review history. Turns out that after politely probing a bit, most have stayed at an STR with parents or friends and understand the concept of house rules, etc.

[jimgotkp]

I have found that 4 out of 5 of my prior guests so far without reviews have done troublesome things. Our worst guests by far also had no reviews.

[Ross123]

No reviews can be a sign of trouble but I also think with the rise of a lot of automation and prop. management companies the amount of hosts rating every guest has dropped.

I don’t have data to back that up but from speaking to other professionals and having done a lot of demos on PMS systems it seems like that’s where it’s heading. It seems like hosts are more likely to leave a review only for bad guests.

[jcb930]

To me as a host, a lack of reviews would send me the message that the guest might have been difficult, and the host decided not to leave a review in order to avoid provoking the guests into leaving a bad review in return. (For example, a guest who complained a lot would be unlikely to leave the host a five star review, so the host just leave it alone and be glad they were gone.)