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Could you elaborate on "the way reviews are incentivized". As I understand it, guests review of the host is only visible to the host after the host has also reviewed the guest or a deadline has passed.

Do hosts look at the reviews the guests have left to previous hosts and that incentivizes the guests not to give bad reviews? Or am I missing something?

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Yes, if you give sub-five-star reviews it seriously messes with the hosts’ bookings, from what I’ve heard. And it’s pretty common for one person to manage a bunch of properties for the owners, so a bad review is messing directly with that person’s livelihood. The profit from your booking is not worth the risk of a negative review.

Additionally, I’ve heard stories of negative reviews getting “disappeared” but I’m not sure how that works.

Tangentially: this is why I read lots of reviews before booking, because you can sometimes spot rotten host behavior hiding in the five-star reviews.

this is precisely why a bad review should be left for hosts doing this sort of practice. They are likely running this across large operations, extorting “hidden fees” from each stay at each property.

Their profits should be systematically targeted if the fees are undisclosed upfront and they’re abusing it.

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