Airbnb has completely revamped its review system

Be honest. That’s all Airbnb wants. The home-rental service said Thursday it tweaked its reviews system in the hopes of encouraging more honest reviews. The startup cited the potential concern of someone wanting to leave a review that includes both praise and criticism, but worried about receiving an unfairly critical review in response. Looking to avoid that issue, Airbnb now will reveal reviews from both the host and guest simultaneously. “We want to make it more comfortable for everyone in our community to provide honest, accurate feedback,” Airbnb said in a blog post, “and help increase confidence in the reviews they see on listing and profile pages.” The company said it also is cutting down the time to submit a review to 14 days, from 30 days, after it found that 90 percent of reviews are submitted within two weeks. At the end of the 14-day period, if only the host or the guest left a review, that review will be made public.

Airbnb today announced it has revamped its review system to promote more and more honest feedback. Given that the accommodation service is completely built on trust, this feature is arguably the most important to ensuring its continued use: both hosts and guests can make informed decisions before and during the stay. The first change is that reviews will now be revealed to hosts and guests simultaneously: they will only be shown after both participants have completed their assessment of the experience. This is in response to both hosts and guests worrying that if they leave an honest review, they might receive an unfairly critical review in response. Next, the review period is being shortened from 30 days to 14 days. Airbnb says 90 percent of hosts and guests who leave a review, do so within two weeks. The change is thus being made so that the feedback people provide is based on a more recent impression. If after the 14-day review period only the host or the guest has left a review from a completed trip, Airbnb will make that review public to both the recipient and the community. If you prefer to leave private feedback for your host, that option has also been added (curiously, hosts can’t do the same for guests). Every guest will now be prompted to share one thing they loved about their stay and one thing they’d encourage the host to improve. This feedback won’t be public: the host will receive it alongside their public review.