Four Stars for Peeling Paint and Broken Doors? What’s Behind High Airbnb Ratings

I'm not really sympathetic to the way that this article suggests the owners of excess housing are suffering from too many rentals on the short term market.

These are folks who are wealthy enough to own excess housing stock, and they are using it not to house people but for vacationers.

Prices low for short term rentals? Good. Hopefully they'll enter the long term housing market (or be sold to home owners).

The problem is very simple: AirBnb has outsourced the job of management to the customer. Of course this is to cut costs and save money.

The gig economy depends on customers doing this extra work, and maybe in the beginning it made some sense. Airbnb wasn’t pitched as a hotel replacement, it was supposed to be a no-frills way to match up homeowners who were gone for a weekend with backpackers who were there for a weekend. Uber wasn’t pitched as a taxi replacement, it was supposed to be a hip new way to car pool.

Well, things have changed. Some apartments are now permanently for rent. Uber drivers typically drive regularly and depend on Uber for income. Airbnb and Uber are billion dollar companies listed on NYSE.

I don’t feel the same way about doing favors like cleaning up an Airbnb now as I would’ve a few years ago, when it felt like the host was doing a favor for me. And I certainly don’t feel like doing a favor for these huge middleman platforms which traditionally would’ve needed to have some internal rating system but now don’t even have to do that.

Airbnb is a roll of the dice every time. No idea if it will be canceled the day of, the quality inside, hostile neighbors. We only use Airbnb for rural places without hotels, where our money is appreciated and there aren’t other options. In cities, hotels of known quality are just as expensive and much more reliable.

There are five basic problems here with these rating systems in general:

1. Not everyone leaves ratings so there's a selection bias;

2. Everyone uses a different standard. The number of times I've seen a restaurant 1-star review that basically said "the food was great but we have to wait 15 minutes for a table when turning up unannounced with a party of 12 on a Friday night" is astounding;

3. Psychology makes people disinlined to leave bad reviews. The article mentions this with the woman trapped in a room. To me that's a safety issue and should be an automatic 1-star and a complaint to AirBnB and possibly to authorities. She didn't want to hurt the owner's business? The owner is a parasite;

4. Ratings inflation is a real problem; and

5. The platform is incentivized to having high ratings.

The last one is a big one and not talked about as much. Think about it: if you, as a user of AirBnB (for example) leave low ratings, that's bad for the platform. Other users feel less confident about using the platform.

The side effect of this (intentional or unintentional) is that you want to make it harder for these people to use the platform. If you're Uber, you might not match them to a driver. If you're AirBnB, you might hide certain properties or make it more likely that the owner won't accept their reservation.

I am Airbnbs prime target because I am on and off digital nomading, now I am renting for over a year short term (weeks to months). I stopped using Airbnb however since positive experiences were outweighed by bad ones. In the past year there was a salty host when I gave detailed feedback highlighting good and bad (he only wanted me to mention the good stuff I guess?), a host who took the total for a week in advance and refused to refund anything after I found it's unlivable and left first morning (I am not rich enough to spend half a grand per night), etc. I have a feeling that with a "right" approach it's possible to make money off Airbnb with people almost never actually staying at your place: establish good rating then charge in advance and refuse refunds. Tired travelers would rather leave than fight you so you probably don't get a hit. Switched to Booking and good old word of mouth/on location scouting.

It was clear a long time back that you can’t just go by the rating alone. I’ve Airbnb’Ed regularly and here’s my tips:

1. Stop renting whole homes. Stop being part of the problem. Airbnb is good for someone letting out their spare room and that’s all I use it for.

2. Avoid any place with less than 30 ratings. Hard to tell with anything fewer.

3. Try your best to stick to superhosts.

4. Avoid places where you share bathrooms. Seems like a good filter.

5. Read through at least ten (if not all) of the non five star reviews. Read fully. Most people tend to leave somewhat positive reviews even if they had a less than positive experience but they WILL mention the problems they had in the last sentence or in a mellow way. Exaggerate and read between the lines to understand the reality.

If you’re not willing to do all of this just book a hotel (though I have a similarly complex process for them as well).

There are bigger issues to worry about with Airbnb:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-...

With the money they[AB&B] make, could they not afford some kind of Zaggat-like roving rating staff who go around unannounced once per year to rate these places[1]. Not necessarily stay there, but go in and look around for basics. This would be the "hard" rating and then you could also have the guest generated "soft" ratings as well.

It need not be mandatory, but optional and eventually those not opting in are evaluated more suspiciously.

[1] places that rent out at least 100 days per year or some such cutoff.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lHr7GXuqzm0 How short term rental kills cities. The same channel also constantly boast about "transportation revolution" as something "trains, but less efficient, nice demo"

Maybe the solution is hotel

Maybe reviews should be anonymous.

Anybody who uses an airbnb instead of a hotel which has regulations is just asking to get murdered.