How to Respond to Negative Airbnb Reviews

So you get a negative or not necessarily entirely positive review on your Airbnb VRBO or other short term rental listing? What do you do? Do you just leave it alone? Hope that nobody notices it, and just let it get piled on top of with better reviews? Do you take the time to respond? And if you do, how do you respond? Should you defend yourself? Should you apologise? Should you take ownership? What What should you do? That’s a question I get asked really often from people that are hosting on Airbnb, because let’s face it, it’s inevitable. If you’re hosting for long enough, you will eventually get at least one or two negative reviews, or at least less than perfect reviews on your Airbnb or short term rental profile. And so the question is, what do you do? Do you respond to them? Do you not, that’s what we’re gonna be talking about in this video today, if you just got a bad review, I feel for you. But if you want to know exactly what to do about it, then check out this video that we’re going to be diving into. So let’s get started by talking about should you even respond to it or not? And the answer is yes, absolutely. But before that, there’s actually something even more important to do with that negative review. And that’s take the feedback, right, you need to actually take in the feedback that guest has given you. And sure, sometimes it may be an unjustified review. And we’re actually gonna talk in this video as well about how you can get unjustified reviews taken down off of your profile. But if it’s not a entirely unfounded review, and there’s actually some good feedback in there, then you want to make sure you take in that constructive feedback so that you can improve your listing. At the end of the day, nobody’s perfect, you’re not expected to be a perfect host. Even though a lot of the times you’ll feel that way. And so the best thing you can do to strive for that perfection and get closer to it all the time is to take in all the feedback you get and use it to your advantage, use it to improve. So if a guest gives you hard to hear, but constructive feedback on how your listing could be improved, it’s really important that you take that feedback and use it to improve. That’s step number one. Step number two is to figure out whether or not the review is justified. And largely this just means is it actually honest, is it actually factual, and is it stuff that’s within your control, because if it doesn’t meet those criteria, then good chances are, you can actually get it taken down off of your account. So for example, if it’s just blatantly dishonest review, if a guest is lying about something in their review, then oftentimes you can reach out to Airbnb, and you can get them to review it and take down their review, if they find out that it actually is, in fact, just full of lies. Also, if it’s not, if it’s emotionally charged, if they’re saying anything offensive, if they’re being rude in a review, typically you can get that review taken down. And then third is if there’s a review for something totally outside of your control. And that’s why they’re docking you points on your review, then typically, you can get that taken down as well. So what I mean by that is, let’s say that they give you a negative review, because it was really cold at the at the property that you know that when they visited and not that inside, it was cold because your heating broke. But just like the weather wasn’t good, or they went up to go skiing and the ski hill was was closed because there wasn’t enough snow, something like that. Well, in those cases that was obviously not inside of your control, there’s nothing that you could have done about that. And so typically, you can reach out to Airbnb and get those types of reviews taken down. So first thing, take the feedback and learn from it. Second thing, see if the review is actually justified. And if it should stay up or should be taken down, if it should be taken down, reach out to Airbnb see about getting it taken down. In the meantime, what I also recommend you do is step number three, which is respond to the review, the worst thing you can do with a negative review is just leave it there because it means that now future guests that are coming and seeing that review are just seeing one side of the story. And it’s not really that they only want the only one to see both sides of the story. It’s more so they want to see your acknowledgement of the issues and your resolution of the issues. So I’m not telling you that you should go and respond and argue with that guest or you should defend yourself and get overly defensive. You really just want to give the future guests are going to be looking at that a clearer picture of the host that’s going to be working with them to see that you’re a reasonable person, that you’re kind that you’re you know that you’re polite. And then also you’ve actually done everything you need and you need to do in order to remedy any actual issues there at the property. So here’s some quick do’s and don’ts when it comes to responding to negative reviews on Airbnb. Number one do is keep it factual. Make sure you’re not tying in a bunch of emotion and that goes along with number one don’t is be rude. You want to make sure that your response to the guest is very polite because other guests are going to know that that’s how you’re going to treat them. If you Don’t treat them really rudely. This next guest that’s going in booking doesn’t have the context of how rude the guests might have been to you over messages or anything else that might have happened. All they have is what’s right there in front of them. And so if you respond rudely, then future guests are going to conclude that you as a host are rude and no one’s gonna want to stay there. So you want to make sure you keep it factual keep it unemotional, my best recommendation is just keep all the emotion out of it. Guys just want to take a quick break to say that for those of you watching, who want to build cashflow, and long term wealth by purchasing Airbnb ease and short term rental properties, there’s a link in the description down below for a FREE TRAINING they’ll walk you through my exact strategy for investing successfully in Airbnb is the training walks through the three most important things that you need to know if you want to successfully buy your first or next short term rental property. And again, the link is in the description down below for you to sign up completely free. When you sign up for the training, we’re also going to send you our ROI analysis tool completely free so that you can analyse properties the right way and find properties that will generate amazing returns. Again, the link to sign up is in the description down below. And both the training and the ROI analysis tool are completely free. The second absolute do not do when it comes to responder of use is throw blame at the guest, it is never the guests fault. It may be some situational issue, but you really want to take as much ownership with yourself as possible. So really do avoid blaming the guest. Get keep it really factual, avoid any emotion and avoid blaming the guests, you really want to take full ownership and full responsibility. So that is number two absolute must do is take ownership take responsibility. And number three, the third thing you must do is acknowledge anything that you fell short on and what you’ve done to improve it. So once you’ve actually taken action from step number one, the first thing you did was taken that feedback we’ll share about the feedback that you took in how you applied it and how you made sure this issue is not going to show up for future guests. So for example, if someone complains that your dishwasher wasn’t working, then you want to respond by saying oh, well, thanks for letting us know that we had someone go in after right after your stay. I’m so sorry, we didn’t get to during your stay had you let me know during your stay the dishwasher has broken, then we definitely would have had someone out there to fix it right away. We had someone go in right after you checked out and fix the dishwasher. So it’s not going to be an issue anymore. So you want to make sure that now when a future guest is looking for properties instead and they see this negative review, they’re not only going to see that you’re rational that you’re polite, but also that you’ve fixed the actual issue. So they know they’re no number one not gonna have to stay at a property that has a broken dishwasher. And number two, they’re gonna have a really reasonable rational, polite host to deal with. So that’s really what you want to do is respond rationally avoid any emotion, keep it logical, qubit unemotional, you want to make sure that you acknowledge and take responsibility for any issues. And then you also want to acknowledge what you’ve done and state what you’ve done to make sure the issue is completely resolved. As long as you do that, then you’re going to have a really good time, you’re really not going to run into a lot of issues, your long term going to succeed as a host. Don’t get too discouraged. If you got a couple of negative reviews. It’s really not the end of the world. As long as you take the critical feedback, use it to improve and then respond accordingly and make sure that you’re hosting really, really effectively overall in the long term. Again, hosting is not a short term game, you really want to remember that it’s not about the small wins or losses, it’s about the big picture. So try your best to think about it in months and years and not just days. So I hope this video has been helpful for you. If it was then make sure you give it a like hit that like button. Drop me some thoughts in the comment section below. If you have any additional things you’d like to ask questions about on this or if you have any thoughts, anything you’d like to add in, just let me know join the conversation in the comment section down below. Last but not least, if you’re new here or you’re not yet subscribed to the channel, make sure you hit that subscribe button. We post two new videos every single week here on the channel. So make sure you check those out and stay subscribed to the channel so you can stay up to date with those. Thanks so much for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next one