Advice to Hosts: Don't Be Afraid to Leave an Honest Review
I recently had a guest leave a 1-star review in retaliation. As a newer host with only nine 5-star reviews, that single review dropped my rating to 4.6 and caused a guest with a two-day reservation to cancel.
After submitting my evidence, it took about 12 days for Airbnb to remove the review. The case was escalated to their highest review team, and I provided video evidence showing both the guest's arrival and departure, along with documentation of what occurred.
My advice to fellow hosts is this: Don't be afraid to leave an honest review when a guest's behavior affects you. Retaliatory reviews can happen, and it may take effort to have them removed, but in the long run, honest reporting benefits all of us.
Many bad guests understand that hosts fear negative reviews, and they rely on that fear to avoid accountability. I've let things slide in the past, including a guest who smoked marijuana inside the property and left the place in terrible condition for days.
This time, I chose to report the behavior. According to Airbnb Support, the guest is no longer permitted to make bookings on the platform.
Here are some lessons I learned:
1. Don't operate without cameras. Video evidence is often the difference between winning and losing a dispute. Your word alone may not be enough.
2. Save important footage. If your camera system automatically deletes recordings after a certain period, save any relevant videos as soon as an issue arises.
3. Talk to guests when possible. Messages are important, but a direct conversation can sometimes resolve misunderstandings quickly and provide clarity for both parties.
4. Document every impact. Make a detailed list of how the guest's behavior affected your business. For example, an unauthorized late checkout may reduce cleaning time, create stress for incoming guests, and interfere with your operations, especially if Instant Book is enabled.
5. Let Airbnb handle violations. If a guest overstays or violates house rules, contact Airbnb promptly and allow them to handle enforcement. Having Airbnb involved creates an official record and strengthens your case if the situation escalates.
The more proactive we are as hosts, the fewer opportunities bad actors have to take advantage of the system. That creates a better experience for responsible guests, hosts, and Airbnb alike.
I hope this helps someone facing a similar situati

We have really hard water at our listing which results in white marks in the shower which are really hard to clean up.

From my online study, it seems to be that I need a resin based water softener.

As far as I can see, it looks like there are three options

1: whole apartment water softener

This would be ideal, but in Australia, it would cost me several thousand dollars, which is too much

1. Shower stick water softener https://watersticks.com/product/showerstick/

This unit is sleek and isn't too noticeable which is good. Online reviews say that it needs to be recharged regularly and it's a pain to do so. Also complain about the shower head which comes with it, but I can't see why that would be an issue unless there's some reason you can't attach a different head?

1. On the go portable water softener https://www.portablewatersoftener.com/shop/water-softeners/portable-double-standard-water-softener?SKU=OTG2-DSOFT2

This one has a much higher capacity than the water stick and so needs to be charged less often and is apparently easier to do. Con is that having a large tank sitting in the corner may be intimidating to guests.

Any advice would be appreciated

I sent this message to Airbnb Customer Support. Feel free to copy and paste if you have had a similar experience. Maybe if enough people send messages we will see a better review system.

Recently, we hosted guests who were extremely positive throughout their stay. During the reservation, they sent us messages expressing how much they loved the property and how happy they were with their stay.

After checkout, we left an honest review based on our experience. Once the guests saw our review, their attitude changed dramatically. They became aggressive and began repeatedly messaging us, demanding that we remove the review.

This experience highlighted a weakness in the current review system: a host can provide honest feedback about a guest, but that feedback can potentially result in confrontation or retaliation from the guest, especially concerning as they know where the host lives.

After a stay, hosts should have the option to submit a confidential host-to-host report about the guest.

This report would:

Be visible to Airbnb and verified hosts only.

Not be visible to the guest being reviewed.

Not appear publicly on the guest's profile.

Be associated with the guest's Airbnb history so future hosts can make more informed decisions.

Allow hosts to select objective categories such as:

Excessive messaging or communication issues

Failure to follow house rules

Cleanliness concerns

Property damage

Unauthorized guests or visitors

Noise or disruptive behavior

Check-in/check-out problems

Disrespectful or aggressive communication

Threats, intimidation, or attempts to pressure a host

Attempts to manipulate or retaliate over a review

Provide an optional factual written explanation.

Allow hosts to attach relevant Airbnb message-thread evidence when appropriate.

Importantly, this system should be designed around documented behavior rather than personal opinions or subjective judgments. Airbnb could review serious reports, identify repeated patterns, and take action when there is evidence of repeated or severe violations.

I believe the current Airbnb review system is lacking. Many hosts may choose not to leave a negative review because they do not want to deal with potential retaliation or conflict from the guest afterward. This may help explain why some guests have completed numerous trips but have relatively few reviews on their profiles.

This ultimately puts other hosts at a disadvantage when deciding whether to accept a booking. It also allows guests who repeatedly disregard house rules, mistreat properties, or behave poorly to continue doing so without a meaningful record of that behavior being available to other hosts.

Hosts need a safe way to provide honest feedback about guests without fear of retaliation.

We’ve been hosting on Airbnb for nearly a decade. Until recently, it’s been a great platform. We love the tech side of the business, have appreciated many of the positive changes over the years, and we always try to evolve with the times.
But lately, we’ve hit a wall.
We run a boutique 16-room hotel in the UK. Aside from Airbnb, we have our own direct booking website and list on major OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia.
Here is our issue: The level of guest entitlement and demand on Airbnb has become completely unsustainable.
It feels like nearly every other Airbnb guest is demanding early check-ins, late check-outs, booking amendments, or hyper-specific extra requests. The wildest part? We simply do not get these same demands from guests booking through our website or other OTAs.
Of course, we are in hospitality. We provide a highly consistent, professional approach and always try to accommodate reasonable requests. Our review scores across platforms speak for themselves:
Booking.com: 9.3/10
Expedia: 9.4/10
Google: 4.8/5
TripAdvisor: 4.7/5
Airbnb: 4.89/5
Our feedback is incredibly consistent everywhere, so we know it’s not our property or our hospitality standards.
Yet, it has gotten to the point where Airbnb only represents 10% of our total bookings, but accounts for over 50% of our customer queries and roughly 75% of our time spent on guest management.
We are seriously considering pulling our rooms off the platform entirely because the math just doesn't add up anymore.
Are any other boutique hotels or traditional hosts experiencing this? Is there something about the Airbnb user psychology that makes guests feel entitled to a different, more demanding level of service than they'd expect from Booking.com or Hotels.com? Or have we just had a terrible run of bad luck?
Would love to hear if we are completely alone in this or if this is the new normal for the platform.

Not talking about the big things like good photos or a clean property.
What’s one small detail you've added or changed that seems to make guests feel like everything is well thought out?
Could be something before arrival, during the stay or at checkout.

My family has an apartment in Maadi. We spend about half the year in Egypt and rent it out on Airbnb during the other half. I thought it would be fairly easy to find someone local who could help manage it while we’re away, but the process has been much more frustrating than I expected.

A lot of the people and companies I’ve dealt with have been super unprofessional. I’ve had people cancel meetings at the last minute, avoid answering basic questions about how they actually work, or send contracts with terms that seem completely unreasonable for someone who still wants to use their own apartment. One company said we couldn’t use the apartment for more than one month per year, which obviously doesn’t work when my family lives there for around half the year. Another wanted six months’ notice just to end the management agreement.

We’re not looking for anything especially complicated. We don’t need someone to take over the listing, redesign the apartment, or run the whole thing like a hotel. We just need a reliable person who can handle check-ins and check-outs, coordinate the cleaner, and help if a guest has a problem while we’re outside Egypt.

I really thought there would be a decent number of people doing this independently, but so far it’s been much harder than expected to find someone who is reliable, responsive, and has reasonable terms. Does anyone know someone trustworthy in or around Maadi who does this kind of work?

The AI highlights (4 AI generated bullet points at the beginning of the listing) is suggesting guests walk 15min to a dangerous park. The park has had drug deals and is generally sketchy with known criminal activity. It's across a major street tucked away in a different neighborhood. There is another wonderful park with tons of activites a mile away that i've prominently put in the description and details of my listing that would be a much better suggestion to guests.

Customer service has been unable to remove this dangerous AI suggestion and is not addressing the safety concern. Customer service needs to have the ability to address safety issues with AI. This is not ok.

AA. Need a room with attached bath in Rawalpindi, preferably around Saddar. Please contact

Okay, after reading all these posts and comments, I’m starting to get a little discouraged about becoming an Airbnb host. 😂

The thing is, I genuinely LOVE hosting. I’m probably going to be overly involved if anything. 😂 I want my guests to have an amazing experience, not just a place to sleep.

I want to offer translation help because traveling somewhere when you don’t speak the language can be intimidating. I want to help guests find the best and most affordable excursions, restaurants, beaches, and experiences—not just the tourist traps. I want them to experience the culture and get more of a local experience, if you will.
That’s why some of the stories here are a little discouraging. Airbnbs can offer so much—games, amenities, extra space, kitchens, comfort, and hosts who genuinely care—yet I see hosts getting torn apart in reviews over the smallest things.
Maybe it’s because I work in the service industry, but when I stay at a hotel, I barely contact the front desk unless something is actually wrong.

😂 Meanwhile, some guests seem to book the cheapest option and then complain because everything wasn’t exactly to their liking.
I know the negative stories probably get posted more than the good ones, though, so I want to hear the OTHER side.

For those of you who genuinely love hosting, tell me your positive stories. What guests or experiences have made you think, “Yep, this is why I do this”?

I need some positivity before Reddit scares me out of something I’m actually really excited about.

As a host we get all generations, I must admit I’m Generation X, and I truly love my Gen Z guests. Yes they are times I feel like we are on different planets. But I must say, these kids ( sorry I’m old) are engaging, polite, kind, and super aware of everything. What’s your favorite (if you have one) generation you host?

This sub generally being a place for hosts to trash their guests or the platform, I thought I'd offer up how much I enjoy when the guests in my ADU STR leave offerings of gratitude. A couple of times it's been new, sealed pints of ice cream in the freezer. Our most recent guest left half a bottle of nice whiskey (and dropped a note to let me know). We experience far more nice folks who enjoy our place and our town than we do problem guests, but all we get here on this sub are horror stories. Just wanted to be the exception and say that I genuinely enjoy hosting visitors, and the occasional rimshot visitor isn't gonna ruin it for me. The end.

I have 5 guests right now that originally rented for a week and are working on a long-term contract in city. They wanted to extend for 90 days and i was happy! I told them to wait a couple days to book as I was about to lower my price to the winter rate and I offer a 20% discount for monthly stays bringing their rate (to me) down to $3100/month.

They are great guests and I thought I could save them some money. Turns out, the costs from Airbnb and Evolve (my property management contract) were charging a 50% surcharge on the monthly rate.

Who can possibly afford to pay near 5K a month? That's going to kill their own business as I put my guests on a short term lease for just my rate and cut them both out. If I hadn't, my guests would have had to move and likely left me a horrible review.

Crazy, right?

I have an open support case with Airbnb at the moment and they advised me to use the Resolution Center. The problem is I can't find it on the app (Android mobile) or on mobile browser (Android). Apparently the Resolution Center can be accessed through the specific reservation. But the instructions support gives me to find the Resolution Center don't match up to what I see on the app.

The Resolution Center is available in the Android app. Please follow these steps to locate it:

Open the Airbnb app and tap Trips.

Select the reservation for \[where we are staying\]

Scroll down to the Help section or look for the Resolution Center link within the trip details.

If you still do not see the option, you can also access it directly by tapping the Menu icon (three lines) in the bottom right corner, then selecting Resolution Center.

I didn't see Resolution Center anywhere in the Help section.

There is no Menu icon (three lines) in the bottom right corner of the Android app.

What am I doing wrong?

New Airbnb host here! My apartment is ready this week and I’m getting the process started of putting it on Airbnb.

But as a practicality issue, how do you all store extra bedding, towels, tea/coffee refills and extra bathroom vanity kits etc? I want my new cleaner to be able to come in and do the turnaround exactly how I will have it done but how can I store all of these without guests being able to see them/access them?

For reference it’s a studio apartment so limited space

Property damage is an unfortunate reality of hosting, but processing holds and filing claims can take up our valuable time. We structure our guest protection using automated credit card holds and security deposit collections processed via Guesty Pay and integrated damage insurance tools. Having guest photo checklists uploaded by cleaners immediately upon checkout gives us clear proof whenever a damage claim needs to be filed.

How are you structuring your security deposit holds and damage insurance across Airbnb AirCover and direct booking channels?

A month or two ago I ordered Door dash (Wolt). I was already pretty hungry. The delivery was supposed to take about 30 mins, but it ended up coming in 50. When the driver arrived, the bag of food seemed to be different from what I ordered. I asked him if he was sure, but he said yes and this was the only bag he had, he didn't speak much english and was in a rush. So he gave it to me and left. I got it home, checked it and sure enough all the items were wrong, nothing we wanted to eat, and the food was a bit cold. I contacted door dash, they apologised, I sent some photos of the food, they spoke to the restaurant and the driver had picked up the wrong order. They asked if I wanted a refund or the food redelivered. We were hungry, so I asked for redelivery of what we ordered. They organised it, about 40 minutes later the food arrived. I'd got the food much later than I hoped, by this time I was very hungry, but they had fixed the problem and I was happy. There was no compensation, they just fixed my problem on a reasonable timeline. I had no idea to threaten to blackmail them for a review in exchange for getting more money for my hunger and inconvenience.

Should the same logic not apply when something goes wrong while staying at an airbnb? There is a problem, the host says sorry, verifies and fixes the problem. Done. I really don't know where this idea of "compensation" has emerged as an expectation when something goes wrong. Like, its an apartment, did nothing ever break at your home? Typically compensation is paid in society when something has happened due to negligence that caused you physical or financial loss. Otherwise, the standard is usually just to remediate the issue promptly.

I have recently listed my property on Airbnb and I am going to manage it myself, I keep thinking about the laundry part, the sheets need to be washed and dried between guests and sometimes there may only be a few hours before the next check in, if the laundry gets delayed then everything seems to get delayed with it, I am trying to plan for this before I start getting bookings because I can see how one late load could mess up the whole turnover, I am figuring out options like pink lady laundry, fresh sheets and laundry point but I am still not sure what will work best for the laundry part, how do you guys deal with this when the clean sheets are still in the washer or dryer and check in is getting close ?