I recently had the occasion to stay with 4 different Airbnb hosts over the span of under a month, my takeaway was that if I owned any Airbnb stock, I would've sold it immediately.

The first two accommodations were huge let downs in terms of cleanliness, despite both advertising Enhanced Clean. The first trip was booked for a month, but we got sick of ants, mice and lack of action after about a week and left early. The second was so incredibly filthy that we left the morning after checking in. While Airbnb corrected the issues by letting us get out early, this was incredibly disruptive to our plans and not representative of what was promised.

The worst part came later, after our mutual reviews for that second place became public. My review and scores got removed with no notice, so that host continues to advertise as Superhost with Enhanced Clean and decent enough, if few, reviews. On the other hand, he posted a nasty review of me full of spin, which remains there to this day. My response to it contained a link to a gallery with evidence, and Airbnb removed that as well. My questions to support remain unanswered.

This turned into something of a rant, but the main takeaway is that I have entirely lost trust in the review system. Not only does is skew towards high marks, but critical reviews can be removed at a moment's notice with no recourse. That does not reflect well on the company, IMO and there are clearly hosts that have learned to play the system. Too bad.