I like to rant about Airbnb and bad Airbnb experiences. But actually I am using it quite often and most of my experiences were good if not even great. The problem is that you have to choose very, very carefully. It’s pretty contrary to choosing a hotel on a booking platform where you can be kinda sure that a hotel with a rating of 7.9 out of 10 should be good enough to survive a few nights. With Airbnb if you want to have a good experience (and I am sure you want) you can safely ignore every host with a rating of lower than 4.5 stars (out of 5) in any category.
People are too kind to give honestly negative ratings
I’ve made the experience that people (including myself) tend to be kind and forgiving to their horrible hosts. Instead of ringing the alarms and warning the world, they just don’t rate their recent Airbnb horror at all. That said, if someone does give a bad rating, it must have been really bad. Not that “I’ve got bitten by a lady bug”-bad but the well known “I’ve jumped out of the plane and forgot my parachute nightmare”-bad. You know what I mean. So check the ratings, particularly “accuracy” and “cleanliness”. If the host’s description isn’t accurate, their “well lit natural bathroom” may turn up to be a bucket in the garden surrounded by some fireflies. And if the cleanliness doesn’t matter to you, well, go find yourself a new blog to read.
If the host is naked, run
One of my, let’s be polite, “expendable experiences” was finding the half naked host sitting on the loo in my “private bathroom” with an unlocked door. Some twenty minutes after I’ve got woken up by a loud argument between the host and her bestie about taking prescription drugs and drinking alcohol. That wasn’t in a “bad neighbourhood” where everything tries to warn you “don’t go there under any circumstances” and you know from the beginning that it is a bad, bad idea to take even one more step. No, it was a decent area with nice houses, pretty front yards and very attracting Christmas decorations. Everything was great but the Airbnb rating. Only a 4.5 with a 4 in the category “accuracy”.
Read the reviews on Airbnb carefully
No matter if the rating on Airbnb is a 4.5 or a 5, read the reviews. Concentrate on the reviews with less than 5 stars. Try to find the weak spots others didn’t want to write about because they were concerned to expose or offend their host. And I totally get it. Some hosts are really trying and are very kind people. But in the end it’s not a place where you can spend a night for free. It’s a service you’re paying for and it shouldn’t be something that turns your maybe awesome vacation into just a good one. Or even a terrible one. I can’t stress it enough: Read the reviews. Carefully. Look out for the cockroach in sugar-coat. And if there aren’t any, you can end up with a very nice experience with a very nice host in a very nice Airbnb.
Edit 07/2018: Unfortunately, Airbnb removed the individual star rating for every review. This makes it very hard to find the negative commentary, particularly at highly frequented Airbnbs.
