Getting Reviews From Guests in Airbnb

When you run an Airbnb business, it is important to understand that guests’ reviews directly impact your ability to make money. 

In this episode of Vacation Rental Machine, Jon Bell and Julian Sage share tips on how to have your guests leave reviews. 

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Full Interview Transcript

Jon Bell:                               00:00                     In this episode of vacation rental machine, we’re talking about how to have your guests leave reviews.

Julian Sage:                         00:08                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start, grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation where we’ll be talking about starting, automating, and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Jon Bell:                               00:34                     All right, welcome back, host nation. Today I have the pleasure of being with Julian Sage, my partner in crime in this whole thing. And we’re talking about guests leaving your place, not only leaving but leaving you a good review. How do you get your guests to leave a review after they leave? But before we get into that, I just wanted to let everybody know, if you’re listening to this message, BNB empire is now closed. What can you do? Because you missed it. You can sign up for the waiting list. If you sign up for the waiting list now you’ll most likely be first priority as soon as we open it back up. Again, BNB empire is now closed. For those early adopters, thank you for joining us over there. We are bound to make big moves and that’s what we’re about with VRM and the BNB empire group.

Julian Sage:                         01:27                     So Jon, it’s pretty interesting because when I look at a lot of people’s profiles, I see that they have maybe been hosting for a long time, but their reviews aren’t really up there. And Airbnb does have a good process of being able to keep on notifying people to leave reviews. But some people need a little bit extra and even when they do leave reviews, sometimes they’re not all five stars. They might leave like a three or four star review and everything in the description might be raving, but it’s still a three or four star. And obviously, since our business is so heavy on reviews and reviews really make a big impact, it is important and is very important to know how to do the reviews appropriately so that we are able to get five stars consistently. So what’s the process look like for a professional hosts when you are trying to get people to leave reviews?

Jon Bell:                               02:13                     Well, one, you want to give them the experience of a great day. That is really the first part that makes people want to leave a review. If they had a stellar experience, they will leave a review the very first time that they are asked to leave on by the platform. There’s a second opportunity that you have. I typically send out a message maybe five days after they have left the property that says, “Hey, we want you to leave a review. Here is the reviewing system for the platform just so you know how we’re rated. And could you kindly leave us a five star review.” So to me, the second step is really just sending a message, asking for what you want. We all want to ask for a five star. You’re not really trying to trade them anything or offer them anything in exchange for it because you really can’t do that.

Jon Bell:                               03:08                     You just want to ask for it. It’s really up to them to leave it. After I send that message out, nine times out of 10, people actually do leave their review. The next step that happens for me is I don’t technically leave their review until the seventh day. That is another notification to the guests that lets them know, “Hey, this person wrote a review. Now I’m going to write my review.” I use tools like Smartbnb that stopped me from sending in that review too early if the guests did something bad. Within Smartbnb, you’re able to leave a bad review which basically releases that review about 30 seconds or five seconds before the review period closes. That way, one, you’ve pushed it off. If you have other reservations that have come in, then your other reservations get a chance to fill up the window that somebody might see on that first page so they’re not seeing whatever review this person might be leaving.

Jon Bell:                               04:10                     Secondly, if they even wrote a review at all, you might not even have that there. In the event that they did not leave a review, you just send their review at the very last moment that they won’t even have a chance to even start to send your review back. That is why I like Smartbnb. That helps me keep my reviews pristine. That will help anybody just be on top of their reviews. When I first started out, writing reviews is very difficult, right? I mean, how many words can you really say about people coming to stay at your place? They were good. They were great. I mean, I seen those reviews where it’s just like great guests and that’s it. I feel like you want to be a little more descriptive. Then just that. At the same time when you have somebody that’s coming to stay over and over and over and over again, you don’t want to be too repetitive with your messages.

Jon Bell:                               05:05                     So I do like automating at least three to five review messages that go out. Normally they’re all fairly good, so I don’t need to write a good review. I only need to edit those bad reviews.

Julian Sage:                         05:18                     Jon, I think you hit on a really golden nugget right there in that the timing with those types of bad guests because if a guest does stay and you do want to leave them a negative review and they haven’t left a review yet, if you do leave them a review, Airbnb is going to notify them that you have left a review prompting them to want to leave you a review as well. And if you remind them that maybe there was a bad experience and then that’ll just make them more inclined to maybe leave something negative on you. So leaving it to the last 30 seconds, which is a Smartbnb option, I think that is just so cool.

Julian Sage:                         05:50                     And one of the reasons why we do use Smartbnb in our business. So if you are interested in using smartbnb, click the link in the description, we have that available for you. It’s one of our links that you can go through, does help support the show but it is because we use this tool actively in our business. It has a whole suite of tools that really does help you. And if you want to know more about smartbnb, then definitely want to go back to some of those previous episodes that we did about automated messaging where we go a little bit more in depth. And if you are looking for some more detailed type instructional videos, Jon and I are working on some really exciting stuff right now. Guys. I know that you all have been hearing a little drops and hints of some of the stuff that we are doing.

Julian Sage:                         06:27                     But Jon and I do have a very secret project that we have been working on for quite a long time and really was the inception of VRM. But we want to give you even more detail and get into the real nitty gritty of how professionals operate their business at scale. And so we are working on some stuff guys, so please stay tuned. Let us know what you think and I have seen some reviews saying like, “I want you to talk more, I want more in depth stuff,” and we’re covering a lot of content in the show. We’re putting out two episodes a week. So if you are enjoying this, then please smash that like button, subscribe, join the host nation, let us know that you do enjoy this. Let us know what you want to hear more of because we do want to be able to get more in detail with you and we have some really cool stuff coming up for you guys very, very soon.

Julian Sage:                         07:12                     So with all that being said, host nation, keep on hosting. Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review, that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community, and I, then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.

 

Links from the show

Start Using Smartbnb 
https://ShortTermSage.com/smartbnb 

Ready to become a host?
https://ShortTermSage.com/airbnb

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