How To Respond To Unhappy Airbnb Guests
BY MIKEL HUBBARD
FORMER HGTV PRODUCER | CO-FOUNDER, THE HOST CO |
OWNER, TIMES EIGHT PROPERTY & DESIGN
As a host, unhappy guests can be the most stressful thing in the world. What if they write a bad review? What if they contact Airbnb? What if they’re a blogger about to put you on BLAST? Ugh, are we supposed to comp their whole trip? Here are our top tips for the most common scenarios hosts encounter, and how to deal with them.
IF GUESTS DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT PROBLEMS BEFORE CHECKOUT, THAT’S ON THEM
Unhappy guests often wait until checkout to complain about cleanliness issues, lack of toilet paper or hot water that wasn’t hot enough. Guess what? You can’t do anything if they don’t tell you. You also don’t get to eat a meal at a restaurant and then ask them to comp it because you didn’t like how it tastes. Guests need to give you a chance to fix something. If they don’t, go ahead and apologize and either offer them a discount for next time or thank them for bringing the issue to your attention so it doesn’t happen to the next guest.
MAJOR ISSUES? DON’T COMP THEIR STAY, LET THEM LEAVE
A good way to tell if a guest is fishing for freebies is to offer to cancel the remainder of their reservation and let them leave. Power outages, broken water heaters, spotting a mouse… there are legitimate reasons for guests to expect compensation. But it doesn’t mean they can stay for free. Offer to fix what you can as soon as possible, offer a discount if they choose to stay, but do not comp their entire rental. It’s better to offer to let them leave if they’re truly uncomfortable, but 9 times out of 10, they’ll deal for a discount. This helps avoid rewarding those people who treat major issues like a windfall and instead helps out those who were truly impacted but willing to deal.
IN GENERAL, DO NOT RESPOND PUBLICLY TO REVIEWS
You may think it’s a good idea to respond publicly to a nice review, but potential guests may feel like it’s your way to ensure that no one leaves a bad review. If you’re always responding to reviews, then no one can speak their mind and that means these reviews are probably overly positive and not indicative of their actual experience.
Responding to negative reviews often makes those whiny complaints seem valid (and ignoring them can have the opposite affect, making you look like the bigger person and the guest look like a complainer who isn’t even worth responding to). If you do respond to a negative review and you’re in any way emotional or critical of the guest, rather than making you look right, it will instead make you as an owner look petty and not understanding.
The only time we publicly respond? If someone writes a negative review that’s inaccurate or egregious, we feel it’s ok to apologize or to state what’s untruthful about the review from YOUR experience. Make sure to treat all complaints as valid, even if what they’re describing is not what you’ve ever seen or experienced. Avoid statements like, “Well NO ONE else has had that problem” or “We get all FIVE star reviews, you’re the exception” — we cringe when we see hosts say that because it makes the guest seem attacked for having an issue. Guests may think, “If I stay there, will you attack me too if I have a problem or will you help me solve it?”
WE WANT A REFUND OUTSIDE OF OUR AIRBNB BOOKING POLICY
It gets tricky when people want to cancel or leave early but won’t get their money back. That means they’ll have the right to leave a bad review, even if it’s unwarranted. Our solution? We always let people cancel and then offer to refund them anything we can rebook. Cancel 5 nights and we can rebook 2 last minute? We’ll refund you your portion of those two nights.
Generally, this lets guests know you’re trying to accommodate them while upholding your cancellation policy so it’s doesn’t turn into a free for all.
If it’s a weather issue, we understand if your roads are literally closed (although ski areas are different), but otherwise, it’s not our fault if the weather isn’t what you expected.
YOUR BEST IS ALL YOU CAN DO
Most commonly, issues will come up and you’ll just do your best to rectify them. If they seem like things YOU would expect a refund for, go ahead and give them a discount. If it doesn’t, don’t offer one. Your guest shouldn’t get $50/off because the bathroom floor heater isn’t working or because the porch light is out. Just apologize and move on. But if the shower won’t stop running at 4am and they have to turn off the whole home’s water, offer them a discount even if they don’t request it. Because it’s what you would expect if it happened to you.
Use your judgement and treat your own expectations in a similar situation as a good gauge on how to treat your guests!
Got a good nightmare guest scenario and advice on how to handle it? DO TELL…. we love the gossip, I mean advice!