Welcome @hatsOffToChoice
I have moved your post into this already existing topic on AirBnB and it’s behaviour. The original poster on this topic also outlined the way reviews were handled.
Thank you for your post.
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This is AirBnb review policy…
It does say that a review needs to be relevant and not contain…
- Content that refers to circumstances entirely outside of another’s control
I suspect that if the review made a passing comment within a relevant objective review, something like ‘place was great, helpful hosts, not airconed which made it warm on a still day, located about 3km from the outskirts of town…and an local wildlife plentiful including a somewhat noisy bat colony nearby…’, it may pass their moderators review.
If a review gave a very low star rating as it focused on the bat colony such as ‘don’t stay at this place as you won’t be able to sleep due to a extremely noisy bat colony, with bats screeching all night, otherwise place okay’, this is more likely to go against their review policy.
Likewise with cleaning reviews. If the review gave very low star rating and was only about a cleaning omission and this was the focus of the review, it might be seen as being biased if other points about the accommodation were satisfactory.
AirBnb do handle reviews differently to many other platforms and take a conservative approach in relation to their content. I don’t know the reason, but it could be to reduce likelihood of AirBnb or their members being exposed to liable action should it be found a review isn’t objective or based on facts…and such reviews damage the accommodation/host opportunity for future booking. Is it right, don’t know, but it could be the other end compared to many review platforms which post anything and everything (even commentary of those which weren’t customers or made before a business is open).
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Agreed. Our review was a mix of the good (close to the lake; kayaks provided) and the bad (bat colony was noisy at night and the smell was rather strong), but I don’t have a copy as they removed it.
The response from Airbnb was:
“After examining your review for [host name removed], we determined that its content didn’t contain enough relevant information about your host or listing to be informative to other community members. For this reason, we have removed the review.”
So a mixed review was removed because Airbnb claimed that the content would not inform a future guest. I can’t help but feel that if it just contained the favourable info, it would not have been removed. I’m sure people would like to know about something that would affect their visit like a bat colony. Some might love the idea. Others may not.
Same with the cleaning - if the review is a mix of good and bad but mentions that the place was not cleaned, that review should not be pulled.
I wonder if others have had mixed reviews pulled.
Cheers
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I wonder what would have happened if your review had something along the lines of ‘we love nature, so it was great to find there was a bat colony nearby, and spent late nights listening to them flying around and hunting’.
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… and squabbling over position and mates, and mating. And the smell of the colony made up of tens of thousands who relieve themselves in the same spot for months at a time brought back to us what being “close to nature” really means in the Australian bush. It was so educational - I could not spell guano before my visit and now I am very familiar with it. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
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