All Forum Posts by: Laura Winters

 You have to self manage run down properties. You will get a horrible review with someone else managing (or possibly shut down) since they can’t put the effort cheap house requires . It is not a choice but must. If you can’t do it by yourself, don’t even start it. 

In the rental income world, what makes money is the number of bedrooms. 

I don't see any difference in Airbnb. 

Today, I saw a line at a Tesla dealership. They said they are selling their car every 20 minutes just at this location. Media will tell you very very filtered information. 

 I find this humiliating. Crazy that we are putting multi-million dollar assets on their platform and these "review specialists" treat us like we are criminals who are waiting for parole judgments XD. I swear no other company will treat millionaires who invest in their business in this way. I couldn't believe that I couldn't speak to anyone and I could only write my appeal twice haha even Walmart customer service will give a more respectful manner

I got my first STR at $150k. Not everyone can start with a $1M condo or cabin. It is at least 10 times harder to run a cheap property than a nice property but you will learn super fast as almost every booking will have some issues and you will be booked every day. I had and learned possibly every Airbnb scenario from that property. (Drug party, orgy, auto theft, high school party, prostitution, funeral -yes someone actually threw freaking funeral at my Airbnb) Running a nice property after that is so easy. My cash-on-cash return on that property for the first year was over 150%. Anything is possible so good luck!

It looks like Airbnb removed the most relevant option from the review.

Reviews are now organized by most recent, highest, and lowest rating. (default most recent)

It was ridiculous they were showing years-old bad reviews at the top with the new change.

Good thing they hear our voices! 

 I just tested with every review that is not 5 stars. Got denied for every single one. This will be not fun. Before the change, a case like yours would be an easy removal. Not sure with the new AI system though. Good luck! 

Hey guys, so I believe you guys saw that Airbnb just changed the review system without any announcement. 

There are 2 major changes and it is a part of Airbnb moving forward to AI system. 

1. Airbnb review removal is no longer handled by the support team or a human. 
This is critical for any review removal since now hosts can’t no longer convince support teams or continuously calling them until find a host-friendly support team member.  
When you choose to dispute a review, they give you 5 categories and the process is very straightforward. 

- retaliatory (bad review because we enforced the rule or charged)

- irrelevant (guest never arrived)

- guest was pressured to write a bad / good review (paid review)

- competitor

- content policy (usually name or address calling or bullying)

Anything that is outside of these 5 categories is not removable at all.!!!!
For example, usual challenging reviews such as complaining about noise, parking, neighbor throwing party, local event, weather…. Are now impossible to remove since they fall under the category of how guests felt during the trip.

This will break a lot of myth about the Airbnb review system such as hosts are not responsible for things that is outside of host’s control (Airbnb never said this in their policy) or Guests can’t write a review about nonfactual things such as BBQ grill or hot tub were broken even it was simply user error. (Airbnb doesn’t get involved in fact checking)

Once you request a review removal, you get the answer pretty shortly and they just tell you whether it was approved or not. They don’t tell you anything about why and you get only one more chance to appeal for that specific review. 

I tested with old reviews to see how easy it is and Yeap. It is not easy at all to remove reviews. (I tested with 1 outside of my control factor, guest’s car got vandalized in a public street and 1 complained about something we don't provide. )

So what happens if you fail to remove the review? It is really bad with the change 2.

2. Airbnb now uses relevant review first as default. (guests have to click the newest first to see reviews in timeline order We have no knowledge of how AI chooses which review to bring it to top but they definitely choose none-5-star reviews over hundreds of other 5 star reviews.
This is really bad since now every single guest will see that one bad review you failed to remove before making their bookings. Even after year and hundreds of successful 5 star stays! So imagine that review talks about they had a sewage back up or the neighbor had a huge truck and they couldn’t find a parking spot. (even if it was just one moving day, now everyone will see this first!)

This will be a challenging time for hosts. I only see that this is the start of AI era and everything will be strictly rule-based even if those rules are not perfect. Big players who usually choose to push bad reviews by volume tactic now really need to think about their strategy.