# My recent vacation and the reviews on airbnb

Recently Me and my family took a short holiday, and stayed for three days in an apartment, discovered and rented thru airbnb. The apartment and the host (the person renting the apartment) have 5 star ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating. Actually, most (if not all) of the properties shown on airbnb have 5⭐ ratings. Keep that in mind for later..

Now the holiday was great, thanks for asking, and the apartment was OK too, but it wasn’t perfect. By perfect I mean the little things which make or break your vacation. For example, the air-conditioners were not cooling like they should, and their remote-controls hardly worked. The fridge door was not hermetically closed so stuff inside was kinda warm. The ceiling fan rotated and gave light, but you couldn’t choose to turn off the light while keeping it rotating. Why? Because one of the operating strings (strings that hang from the fan and you pull them to choose the operating mode) was so short I couldn’t reach it even standing on a chair.

I am not the first to stay at that place, there were many before me. Looking at the listing on airbnb, nothing about those problems is mentioned, all the visits were perfect with angels, mermaids and flying colors. How can it be?!

After leaving the place, I understood what is going on. The host wrote me a minute after I left, asking to give him 5⭐ no matter what, and if I have any complaints to communicate them in private. He wrote:

I have clients from around the world, please don’t hurt my business. If you have any complaints, please communicate them in private and I promise to take care of everything.

Well, no. Sorry, but no. Obviously you didn’t take care of it before my stay, and you are not going to fix it after my stay. All you care about is having perfect 5⭐ rating. But that is not the point of airbnb. The point, as I understand it, is to earn those stars and good reviews by doing everything in your power to make your guests happy. This is your business after all.

Is it hard to fix any of those things I listed? Is it worth taking care of those things? If the business is important to you, you should fix it, and not bag for good reviews. You have to earn them.

# Some thoughts

Well the review system is clearly not working as intended, and reddit is full of complaints. If you are a guest, rate your stay as honestly as you can, otherwise you are hurting the future guests of the property. If you are a host, Please stop begging for good reviews and do something with the complaints: fix them! Oh, and don’t forget to rate the guests fairly as well..

But maybe it is too late in the game now to fix this system. If someone can come up with a better one, which is fair towards everyone, and engineer it so that it’s hard to fake reviews, well you have my money.