How To Remove Bad Airbnb Reviews as a Host – (FULL GUIDE Step-by-step)
How to Remove Bad Airbnb Reviews as a Host – (FULL GUIDE Step-by-step)
If you have received a bad, unfair or 1-star review from an Airbnb Guest, don’t worry! This comprehensive how-to guide will show you the exact steps you should take to remove bad Airbnb reviews left by guests. You will also learn how to prevent getting them in future!
Most guests are reasonable and if you provide a nice experience they do the right thing and leave a 5-star review.
Unfortunately, when you host enough guests, no matter how good your service is or how well you filter the guests from booking, eventually you will get a problem guest who decides to leave a bad review.
This is a long and in-depth article and you can skip ahead if you desire but we really recommend reading the whole article in sequence so you get the most value from the information.
If you prefer to Download the Full PDF Guide and Get our Free Training – you can do that below.
This guide could potentially save you thousands of dollars in lost guest bookings if you don’t know how to deal with these issues properly.
What is considered a ‘BAD REVIEW’ by Airbnb Standards?
ANSWER: Airbnb considers anything less than 5 Stars to be a ‘bad review’.
Unfortunately, Airbnb makes the entire process very unfair to hosts and very confusing for guests.
Airbnb sees anything less than ‘5 Stars Overall’ as a ‘Bad Guest Experience’.
On the other hand, when it comes time for the guests to review their stay, Airbnb makes it seem like it’s totally fine to leave less than 5 stars and even sets up the review process to make it difficult for a guest to give 5 stars in every category.
This means their ratings system is totally skewed AGAINST hosts. Instead of an ‘average’ score being 2.5/5, it’s actually 4.75/5 that Airbnb considers average.
Anything below a 4.75 rating is not eligible for ‘superhost’ status, for example.
You can view the full ratings system article on Airbnb’s website here
(Below is an excerpt from the Airbnb website (current as of 7/MAY/2024)
[BEGIN EXCERPT FROM AIRBNB WEBSITE]
Star rating categories
Guests will rate their stays in the following categories—so bear these in mind when preparing for your next guest:
- Overall experience: How was it?
- Cleanliness: Did the place meet our standards?
- Accuracy: Was it accurately represented with up-to-date photos and info?
- Check-in: Was it easy?
- Communication: Did the Host respond to messages promptly?
- Location: Was the guest made aware of safety, transportation, points of interest and special considerations like noise or other situations that might affect their stay?
- Value: Was it worth the price?
- Amenities: Was everything promised in the listing available and in good, working condition?
Note that Overall experience is a specific category where guests add a rating, not an average of the other categories.
[END EXCERPT FROM AIRBNB WEBSITE]
As you can see from the above article excerpt, the review rating system is pretty misleading for guests. If they were to answer those questions and give a 1-5 star rating for each one it’s easy to see how they give unfair ratings.
For example; “Accuracy”. This is a pretty ridiculous category. In our opinion if a guest gives a ‘3-star’ this would mean a full 40% of every single thing on the property was incorrect!! But a guest might just rate that because you said the beds were super comfy but they prefer a different hardness of mattress or something silly like that.
What options do you have to remove bad reviews from your Airbnb Listing?
Airbnb is heavily skewed against property owners and managers (hosts). Airbnb will ALWAYS take the side of the guest no matter how many years you have been in business – unless you’re very good at managing the process 😉
Our tips below should help you remove a good % of negative reviews or in the very least, help you prevent them in future.
A few methods for removing bad Airbnb Guest Reviews we will discuss are:
- Prevention is far better than a cure
- Warning signs that a guest might be a problem
- Addressing the issue during a stay or before a guest submits a review
- After a bad review appears, how to get it removed
- Methods for getting the guest to remove the review themselves
- Negotiating with Airbnb to remove the review
- Fighting Airbnb to remove the review in the very common case that they are unhelpful the first time you try
- Removing 1 Star Airbnb guest reviews
- Removing 2 Star and 3 star guest reviews
- Removing 4 Star guest reviews
1. Prevention is better than a cure – prevent bad reviews before they happen!
As with most issues in life, if you can prevent a problem before it occurs then it’s much better for all people involved.
Some different ways to PREVENT a guest leaving a bad review include:
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Make sure your property is great!
This might seem like a ‘no-brainer’, but it’s important to mention. Is your space well set up and a great experience for guests? Do you have a good track record of 5-star reviews? Is it well maintained and does everything work perfectly as described at the property? Is the property super easy for a guest to access no matter what time they check in? (EG: clear instructions of a lockbox on site).
If you let things slide and amenities don’t work then this is always an easy way to start having issues with guests and their experience.
BONUS TIP: The first impression a guest has when they walk in the door can make or break the entire experience. Make sure they walk into a clean home, free of clutter and you can also do small touches like having a welcome light turned on, some windows open to bring in a nice sea breeze etc.
For example, if a home has an entrance that leads to a water view you can close all the doors that lead the guest off the walkway that leads to the water views, turn on all the lights/feature lights along the path and open all the blinds prior to their arrival.
This way the guests will walk into a well lit home and their first impression has been pre-designed for them to be a great one! Now the person who booked, what may have been a quite expensive trip, looks like they have nailed the accommodation for their group (and is more likely to leave a good review!)
If a guest walks in the door and immediately starts seeing one or two issues, then they are much more likely to actively look for more issues around the property and potentially become a problem guest.
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Automate messages and respond fast to all messages (especially on check-in day)
A lot of problems can be addressed simply by having great automated messages which are sent out to the guest before arrival and during their stay.
For a full list of our personal automated messages and how we send them automatically using channel manager software, join our community at https://bnbfastlane.com if you haven’t already. Or just email us at hello@bnbfastlane.com.
As a bare minimum you should be sending a message as soon as a booking is made which explains that you look forward to welcoming them and when they will be receiving more information about the property (like check-in details). A check-in message on the day of their stay will include all check-in information (you can also include a brief run-down/welcome guide in this message), a ‘touching base’ message 3-24 hours after check-in, and a message upon checkout making sure they have had a great stay.
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Be extra responsive from ‘booking made’ up until 24 hours after check-in
Most issues occur with guests immediately after booking or within the first 24 hours of the stay. You need to be very vigilant during these times. If a guest is stuck outside in the rain unable to access the property at check-in time you need to be responding to them very quickly to make sure it doesn’t dampen their experience
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Give them the opportunity to flag any issues multiple times.
We ask the guest to report any issues about the property for several reasons. Firstly is because if there is an issue we want to get it resolved as fast as possible so that they appreciate our prompt service. Secondly, if it unfortunately gets to the point where they leave a bad review, then we will have evidence for our case that we asked them multiple times to report any problems and they didn’t. Include this in your automated messages.
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Do a great job and try to meet them in person if you’re worried.
If the guest feels that you really care about their experience, then it’s harder to give a bad review. It’s easier to be mean anonymously than over the phone and it’s easier to be mean over the phone than in person.
If you can physically attend the property, speak with the guests and address concerns then it will be more morally difficult for them to leave a scathing review.
Sometimes the issues they have are mistakes they’ve made themselves, misunderstandings or are easy to solve if you visit the property in person.
Especially when it’s the guests’ own fault, if you can be helpful and fix it they often feel silly for even getting mad about it and you look like a great host for helping them.
If it requires a tradesperson to fix you may be able to then soften them up with a gift or something nice like a later checkout (if it works for you).
Of course some guests are just bad people and will do so anyway, but as long as you try then at least you did all you could.
2 – Identifying the warning signs of a problem guest
Some guests are just bad guests. It happens, it’s a part of doing business. Simply by knowing this will help you deal with them when they come along.
A few warning signs of difficult/bad guests are:
- The cheapo / rule-bender guest – They are asking for discounts and have annoying requests before making the booking or before check-in. Often demanding early check in or late checkout when your listing says it’s not possible to do so.
- The ‘I went over budget now it’s your problem’ – They booked the property at a very cheap/discounted rate, often last minute. This is sometimes a guest who has ‘stretched the budget’ to opt for a better accommodation normally outside their budget, so can be overly demanding.
- The ‘refund scammer’ or ‘Hobbyist host who thinks they’re better’ – As soon as they arrive at the property they immediately start sending you messages about issues or complaining.
- This is especially true if they are also sending photos and mentioning the cleaning standard (even though your cleaners do a good job and/or you have checked the property prior).
- “I don’t do messages, I’ll call anyway” – They refuse to read your messages properly and try to call your phone multiple times (even though all info is in the messages). This shows a lack of respect for your boundaries and a lack of effort to read the messages you sent.
- The Professional Whinger – They start to complain about trivial things and minor issues with the property like a single light globe not working or an item which isn’t even listed as a property amenity not working properly.
- No message etiquette – They are rude or blunt in messages or send barrages of lots of messages. Also guests who just message with tons of questions, many irrelevant to the home itself or answered in your listing.
Chances are if you have to ask yourself ‘I wonder if this is a problem guest’, they are! At this point you should be happy, because you’ve recognized that they may become an issue before they become one.
3 – Addressing the issue during a stay or before a guest submits a review
At this point you may have determined that the guest is likely (or certainly) a Problem Guest. But not always, details as follows…
Not yet a ‘problem guest’ but issues happened:
Sometimes issues arise at the property that are out of your control, leaky plumbing, oven stops working, the list goes on.
This is always a possibility and should be viewed as a cost of business and at the end of the day, this is not a hotel – the guest is renting someone’s private residence and things can happen.
We must be vigilant and rectify issues, preferably before the guest arrives but inevitably things will eventually go wrong during a stay.
When issues occur – The best thing you can do as a host is address and rectify issues as quickly as possible, for the most part a guest will understand that some things are out of your control but if you’re able to fix them for them immediately they will be more likely to be forgiving. Some guests will go as far as greatly appreciating how responsive you are compared to other hosts (but don’t hold your breath!).
The worst thing you can do is not respond to their issues in a timely manner, ignore them or tell them you will fix it after their stay (especially if it needs immediate attention). This will only frustrate the guest, who has paid to have a great stay in your property.
Being responsive to issues and rectifying them for the guest will more-often-than-not earn you a lot of favour in their eyes (sometimes the issues can be ridiculous and then we will have a different approach outlined below), but for the most part as long as you do everything in your power to help them, they will most likely be grateful.
Unfortunately, this may mean that you need to get an electrician to the property at 7pm at night (and wear the cost) but this in the long run will be better than a 1 star review which will cost more in future bookings lost.
(not sure where you want to add this in your numbered sequence)
Once it becomes clear the guest will be an issue
If you’re at the point where you think a guest is highly likely to leave an unfavourable review, unreasonable or not, you must take action to protect your listing. If there have been issues that you’ve helped the guest with or if they were the guest’s fault you must try to keep as much communication through Airbnb messages as possible. Airbnb doesn’t have access to your communication outside of their platform and if things are said in person or over the phone, without documentation and timestamps of messages it’s all just “he said, she said”.
Once you determine a guest may become an issue you must now start “building a case” against them, this may sound extreme but it is your best shot as a host to protect your listing against unreasonable guests.
You must now open a ticket with Airbnb support (a precautionary measure), inform them to NOT contact the guest (as this will normally make the situation worse), then explain to Airbnb the situation that xyz has happened and/or your guest is breaking xyz rule.
Once you have Airbnb support staff on your side you can further “build your case” against the guest. This is also a good time to mention to the Airbnb support staff that you are worried the guest may leave an unfair or retaliatory review and you would like them to mention this in their notes because if they are allowed to review then you want to make sure it can be easily removed by the Airbnb team.*
*It varies depending on which staff member you get as to how effective this point is, but it doesn’t hurt to flag it with them so that you’re not just reacting later on.
NOTE: In the past a 1 star review was much easier to remove, now Airbnb are making it harder and harder.
We have had an instance of a clear cut retaliatory 1 star on a 4.9 star home with 30+ reviews and they simply would not help us because we didn’t contact Airbnb during the stay to inform them of a potential issue. We went through our normal procedure to try and have the review removed (which previously had a very high win rate) but they refused to help us for not contacting them at first sign of an issue. This is why we now always do the precautionary support call step described above).
Think of this situation with the guest in your property now like a person has just hit your car and is trying to defer guilt to you in an insurance claim.
Any admission of guilt you can get them to put in writing further secures your chances of beating them in the court of law, this also works the other way if you start admitting fault unnecessarily.
You know the Airbnb system a lot more than they do, so you need to trigger keywords that you know Airbnb favours and you must use this to your advantage.
If there are complaints about cleaning, but you have your photo set from the cleaner showing the house perfectly presented before their arrival, then you have ammunition to use in an Airbnb claim, for example.
Some guest’s know that if they complain about minor things like this, they can at the bare minimum, get Airbnb to refund the ‘cleaning fee’. You can often tell who these people are as they will immediately take a batch of photos of things around the house and send them to you on arrival. See section ‘2 – Identifying the warning signs of a problem guest’ above!
If you don’t know how to protect yourself against these scammers you will also lose a night of booking revenue or possibly even more, depending on how badly Airbnb decides to penalise you for the guest complaint.
You can use your cleaners’ time stamped and dated photos as proof in your messages to Airbnb that the home was professionally cleaned AND checked on by yourself or your manager prior to their arrival.
Last resorts:
Occasionally what you do will never be enough for some guests and they will genuinely abuse your hospitality. This may be in the form of threats, trying to scam money, or a non stop barrage of demands.
Guest eviction options and process: It may get to a point where your only resort is to now inform them that they have abused your hospitality and you will no longer accept it. At this point you can threaten to evict them if it does not stop.
You must contact Airbnb beforehand and get them on your side before doing this using the method above. Inform Airbnb NOT to contact the guest but that the guest has abused your hospitality/has broken your house rules and that it may need to escalate in a possible eviction from the property.
Inform Airbnb again not to intervene, but that you are keeping them informed that the situation may escalate.
This will definitely escalate things, often beyond repair, BUT the guests have left you with no choice. Having a record of a support conversation in your Airbnb message thread that you were needing to evict them for breaking your house rules will help you in your Airbnb review dispute.
It’s normally unlikely you will need to evict, but it can sometimes be enough to get them to STOP with the abuse or at the bare minimum will show Airbnb that this guest has gone too far.
TIP: Make sure to add in your house rules that any abuse, etc, will result in an immediate eviction so you can refer back to this house rule if it ever comes up in an Airbnb claim.
4 – After a bed review appears, how to get it removed
NOTE: Airbnb guest reviews (and host reviews) cannot be edited, only removed.
If you did all of the above and were able to “build a case” prior to the review being submitted by a problem guest, you now have a much higher likelihood of having it removed.
It still won’t be easy because Airbnb actively works AGAINST hosts every step of the way, so you will need to consistently contact Airbnb support to take it down and keep persisting well beyond what a normal person would think is reasonable!
If you haven’t done any of the above and a guest has blindsided you by a bad review you will still need to follow the same procedure, but unfortunately it may be more difficult.Airbnb has made it harder and harder to have reviews removed and due to the incompetence of their initial support staff you are often fighting an uphill battle.
Below we will outlay the standard procedure for attempting to get a review removed.
TIP: The Number 1 rule with these support emails is to NEVER let the support agent close the ticket, end the conversation or mark this issue as ‘solved’. It will become clearer as you read on.
Removing a 1-Star Review from Airbnb
1 star reviews are by far the most damaging and Airbnb will often go to the extent of suspending your listing for reviews like this, so they must be addressed immediately.
- Immediately open a support ticket with the confirmation code and request that the 1 star review be taken down on X grounds (you can refer to the Airbnb review policy for any keyword to add into this part). You can add your side to the story here as well but the likelihood is that the support staff will not read it and will send you a copy/paste response, you can then just copy/paste the same message further into the conversation if need be.
- Airbnb’s first response will not be helpful or even written by a person in most cases. Once you get the copy/paste response, which will have their Airbnb policy in the message, you can then go through their policy and copy/paste the section that this review is in violation of. Retaliation due to enforcement of house rule is often the one that does best, in my experience.
- Now you will most likely get another copy/paste response from the support staff, you must follow this up by asking for a REAL response due to xyz reason stated above, eg, This review is a retaliatory review due to me enforcing my house rule (use their language) of 10am check out when they told me last minute they were going to check out at 1pm, we couldn’t accommodate this due to the cleaner’s schedule, this was informed to them from the start, in retaliation they have now left a 1 star review.
- They may at this point send a real response but not side with you, this is where you copy/paste their stated review policy and reiterate the parts of THEIR (Airbnb’s) reviews policy that have been violated by the guest
- The Airbnb support staff will do everything they can to not help you and attempt to close the ticket – you must try and keep this ticket open as long as you can. Continue to reiterate their policy and the violations. If you can find any other rules broken, threats or anything you can add them in and reinforce your position.
- You don’t need to get rude, but the goal here is to keep the ticket open long enough for it to be taken to a higher up staff member. The idea is that the support staff have their KPIs tracked by cases closed. If a case remains open for too long, they will eventually be questioned by a supervisor or next on the ladder team member.
- Stick to your guns 100%, you can go as far as to ask them how we (host & Airbnb) are supposed to have a business relationship when they will not protect their (super)hosts/business partners against malicious guests
- Our turnover for 30-60 properties was in the millions per year, so we would lean on this point as well. “We’ve put $x,xxx,xxx in booking revenue through your platform and you’ve earned $x,xxx,xxx in fees and this is how you want to treat your business partner?”
- Keep the ticket open, keep persisting. Continue citing parts of Airbnb’s reviews policy, parts of their guest policy, parts of your house rules and bending them to suit your situation and to why the review needs to be removed. Keep trying to escalate to a team leader who can help more. You can also call their support and reference the conversation if so far all the correspondence has been via messages (sometimes phone calls yield a more lenient response. Always be polite to the agent!).
- If they close the ticket, open another! Sometimes the support staff will be sneaky and try to close the conversation, just open another one and reference the original not being solved and that you didn’t agree that you had reached a resolution yet.
- Results can vary but this is a good start. This method used to have a much higher win % but Airbnb is never a friend of the host and seems to make it harder as time moves on.
In future, this is why you must contact Airbnb at first sign of a problem during a guest stay (using the above method) but this may be your only option if you’ve been blindsided by a 1 star, after the guest hadn’t said anything during their stay.
Removing 2-Star and 3-Star Guest Reviews from Airbnb
These are often much harder to remove because Airbnb sees these as ‘the guest’s experience’ so you’ll need to hope and pray that your guest might be reasonable and take it down themselves, otherwise use the above ‘1-star removal’ method again.
If you’re still on speaking terms with the guest you can contact them and ask if they can remove it themselves by contacting Airbnb. This is the easiest and fastest way to get them removed.
This may not always work because some people are unreasonable. Sometimes they may think that 3 stars IS a good review because they don’t actually know how Airbnb’s rating system works, you can let them know how damaging it is to your listing (or in some cases resulted in your listing being suspended) and ask if they can please contact Airbnb to have it taken down. Make sure to remind them how quick and easy it is for them to do this, they really only need to send a quick message to Airbnb support to do so.
Another benefit of the phone call is that it’s a very subtle reminder that you are a real person, that you have a real issue and that you have their contact number. Obviously don’t actually mention any of this in conversation though!
TIP: Sometimes calling the guest works better than messaging. We often liked to call and ask why they chose to leave such a harsh review and remind them we are real people and we always try our best to give guests a good experience. Sometimes they didn’t even realise their score was that bad. Always be positive, professional and friendly, if you can!
TIP: Whenever a guest makes a reservation, manually write down their phone number as Airbnb hides them after the booking. A Channel Management software is great for this as it will store numbers for you.
If they are nice on the phone and agree to remove it, follow up with them in a nice message thanking them and detailing what you discussed, so that it reminds them and also so that there is a message record in case you still need to go to Airbnb for help.
If they refuse to remove the review, you will unfortunately have to go through the same method as the 1 star removal, it is less likely you’ll be able to get it taken down but it is often worth trying to save your star rating.
Removing a 4-star guest review from your Airbnb Listing
This process is pretty much the same as the previous ‘removing 2/3 stars’ step. However it can go 2 ways.
Best case – Best case scenario is that when you contact the guest and ask why they left a low review score that they actually didn’t realise they did it and that if they knew it was a low score they would have gladly left a 5-star. You can just politely let them know that unfortunately Airbnb penalises you for scores this low and that they consider anything below a 5 to be a problem. (This is true, as you need 4.75 for superhost status and too many 4-stars result in penalties from Airbnb).
Worst case – The guest is awful and they refuse to remove it thinking that they are high and mighty and correct in damaging your listing. This unfortunately happens quite often with 4-star reviews and Airbnb is unlikely to actually remove it (although you should always try to get it removed if you can).
If everything fails and you can’t get the review removed:
You will not win every battle here and may have to take some negative reviews on the chin.
In this instance you will need to reply to the review on your page and inform any other potential guests that this is not a legitimate review due to xyz reasons.
You can explain the whole situation in your response or just write that this was in retaliation to xyz thing that happened.
If you need to exaggerate the reasoning or use some playful gaslighting then feel free! The guest cannot respond to your response and they have chosen to screw you over anyway, so you may as well!
If your home has 10 X 5-stars reviews and 1 X 1-star with a response saying this is not legitimate because this guest, for example, tried to throw a party here and had to be evicted or got a neighbour complaint, etc, then any reasonable person looking at your listing will understand that occasionally you have a few bad eggs come through the property and it won’t hinder your future bookings.
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DISCLAIMER! Everything in this article is to be used as a ‘guide’ and for idea purposes only. The steps and opinions and advice are all based purely on our own experience and opinions. Nothing in this is officially sanctioned by Airbnb or any other platform. BNB Fastlane takes no responsibility for anything you do based on using any information in this document. You’re an adult and you know your business and customers well, so please use a level of decorum, tact and best practices. We can only try and help you and provide this guide, but at the end of the day what you decide to do and how is up to you!