As an Airbnb host, your relevancy and visibility on the platform all come down to your reviews. If you have poor reviews, the Airbnb algorithm will push you down further in the search results, and guests likely won’t consider your vacation rental when they’re looking for short-term rentals in your area. This is why it’s crucial to develop a strong list of 5-star reviews. Positive reviews serve to boost your visibility and offer social proof for potential Airbnb guests.
But how do you go about boosting your star rating? Let’s discover how to ask for 5-star reviews on Airbnb so that you can thrive as a host.
5 Tips for Boosting Your Airbnb Reviews
Getting 5-star Airbnb reviews all boils down to the guest experience. Potential guests need to have a 5-star stay at your property. But what does this look like? Here are five tips that will make it far easier to boost your bookings, support your guests, and encourage them to leave a review.
- Be a Prompt and Positive Communicator: Communication is key when you’re an Airbnb host, and prompt communication is the only way to get high ratings and achieve super host status. Set up notifications, speak kindly to your prospective guests, and always be transparent about any information they request. The better you communicate, the better the experience is for them.
- Offer Top Amenities and Personalized Service: Guests are naturally going to flock to properties that offer the best amenities and the best service, so you must meet both criteria if you wish to get good guest reviews. From Wi-Fi to pool access and even things like personalized gift baskets, treat everyone from the Airbnb community who stays at your property like family!
- Make Bookings, Check-in, and Check-out Easier: The easier you make bookings, the better the experience for guests. You can achieve this by activating instant bookings, implementing self-check-in (and systems that don’t cause frustration for guests), and detailing what the check-out process looks like and when they need to leave by long before they get settled in. When everything runs smoothly, guests are less likely to leave a bad review.
- Take Stellar Care of Your Property: Properties that look great online but then look run-down and dirty once guests show up for their stay are bound to disappoint. You must care for your property inside and out, hiring gardeners to regularly tend to the outside and a specialized Airbnb cleaning service to take care of the inside after each guest checks out.
- Optimize Your Listing and Sell the Experience: It’s hard to get 5-star ratings if you’re not getting bookings. This is why you need to optimize your listing properly. Creating a compelling title, and an equally desirable description, and using keywords so that guests can refine their search and come across your listing is the best way to see more guests come through. Make sure to sell the experience so that guests choose your listing over others nearby.
The Importance of Positive Ratings
So, why do positive ratings matter? Good reviews play a crucial role in two ways: they inspire confidence in potential guests and they help Airbnb notice you as a host.
Think of when you’re purchasing a product online or even in person. While you’re going to take a look at the product and see what it has to offer, you’re undoubtedly going to take a closer look at the various reviews people have left for the product. If these reviews are largely positive, you’re probably going to buy it. If people leave negative reviews, this is going to influence your buying decision. In much the same way, the review system on Airbnb tells guests whether or not a listing is worth their time. Guests don’t want to stay in an Airbnb with subpar service or one that is not as advertised.
Speaking to the second point, Airbnb pays the most attention to hosts who have consistently good reviews. The better your reviews and the more bookings you receive, the more you’ll appear to guests looking for Airbnb in your area. Of course, it’s important to remember that you can’t get there until you get reviews. How exactly do you go about getting a 5-star review?
Crafting the Perfect Review Request
The best way to get a five-star review is to ask. You can craft a request after a guest has checked out to remind them to make sure to tell you and other guests about the quality of their stay. For example, you might say:
“Hello [insert guest name Here],
Thank you for staying with me during your [insert event here]. You were an excellent guest and I enjoyed having you here.
If you had an enjoyable stay, make sure to leave a review to tell me more about your experience and tell future guests what they can expect!”
Or something to that effect.
Make sure to give your guests some time to get home before you send a message so that you’re not coming off as too desperate when you start reaching out to them. You can learn more about how much time they have to leave a review and what the guest review process looks like on their end to craft the perfect strategy as well.
Encouraging Guests to Leave 5-Star Feedback
There are other ways to get 5-star feedback beyond asking directly after a guest leaves. Some good ideas include printing it on a card with checkout directions so that they don’t forget, including it with your welcome message, or otherwise adding it to the process of learning more about your property. When it’s in front of them, they’re less likely to forget. Of course, Airbnb sends an automatic review reminder as well, so that helps.
Responding to Negative Reviews
Try as you might, you’re going to run into the issue of receiving negative reviews. Some of these negative reviews will be warranted, while others will be nitpicky and not fair. In either case, knowing how to navigate these reviews is crucial to staying in Airbnb’s good graces. The best way to respond to negative reviews is to follow this process:
- Thank your guest for leaving a review.
- Identify the good things that they talked about.
- Talk more about the bad things that they addressed and how you’ll aim to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future.
- See if you can remedy the situation in any way.
- Move on and work on making sure your next reviews are better.
Receiving less than 5 stars can be a blow to you as a host, but the reality is that these things happen. All you can do about them is learn from the reviews and work to be a better host with time. Your Airbnb business won’t suffer from a few bad reviews, especially if you’re constantly performing to expectations.
Leveraging Positive Feedback for Success
Every good Airbnb listing is going to showcase some of the top reviews that hosts have received along the way. Why? These reviews can help guests see a short glimpse into what staying on the Airbnb property is like. They won’t feel like they have to drudge through hundreds upon hundreds of 5-star reviews since they can see all the things they need at a glance while they’re looking into the other aspects of the property.
The most important thing to do when you insert a guest’s feedback into your listing description is to ensure that the reviews you put there are varied and that they’re short. A long listing description is essentially a wall of text that no guest wants to have to sit through, which can cause them to miss out on crucial information that you want them to look over. By varying your reviews and double-checking that they don’t sound the same, you’re able to showcase different perks of staying on your property that different guests appreciate (cleanliness, amenities, service, etc.).
Don’t be afraid to use the Airbnb reviews that you receive from guests. They showcase how you are as a host, so they’re worth showing off if you know that it will convince other guests on the platform to stay with you when they’re looking for accommodations in your area.
Learning How to Ask for 5-Star Reviews on Airbnb Is Easier Than You Think!
It’s difficult to grow on Airbnb without 5-star reviews, but you can’t get the reviews you need as a host without asking guests to leave 5-star reviews. Fortunately, going about asking guests for their feedback is not as difficult or as problematic as you might assume when you first get started on the platform. If you’ve been uncertain about how to ask guests for their insights or wondering if it’s even allowed, the guide offered above will help you learn more about what’s appropriate when it comes to getting reviews, how you can encourage reviews without coming off as too pushy, and how you can garner reviews through your actions.
