Tim Hubbard (Short Term Rental Riches podcast) explains how to handle negative reviews for short-term rentals. Key points: monitor reviews closely, never argue or respond angrily, acknowledge guest concerns with a sincere apology, state that the issue has been fixed for future guests, use private feedback to learn improvements, and contact listing platforms to remove false or vulgar reviews. He also recommends reading positive reviews and using feedback to improve operations.
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It's bound to happen. At some point in your short term rental career, you're gonna get a negative review. How do we handle them? What do we do? Let's talk about that in this episode. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick, actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Welcome back, everyone, to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. Happier here again as always. We're talking about something new this week that's maybe not so happy. Actually, most of the time it's a bummer to get a negative review. We're talking about negative reviews and if you're in the industry for any length of time, you're bound to get one. Let's dive in this week. Let's talk about what to do when we get one, some tips for writing a response to the review, which is crucial, and then what we can learn from these reviews. We want to make sure that we're monitoring our reviews, right? I mean, they are essentially the lifeblood of our short term rental business. That's how the algorithms with Airbnb and HomeAway and any listing site where we're at, that's how they rank us. And that determines if people are seeing our properties and that determines if they have the option to rent it. Unless we're on our own website, which I recommend as well. But the reviews are very, very powerful, as you know, as we use them for everything now. It's the word of mouth online. At some point you're going to get a negative one or you're going to get one that you don't think is true. Or maybe something happened that was out of your control, the air conditioning went out. Or maybe you just dropped the ball somewhere and one of your guests checked in and the place wasn't as clean as it should be. Well, these things will all come out on the. So it's really, really important that we monitor them and that we respond to them. So there's some tips for responding to reviews. Number one, we don't ever want to get into an argument online. I mean, we just don't want to do it. It doesn't look good. You've seen this on Yelp or on Google Reviews. When you're looking anywhere where the owner or the business had an opportunity to respond and then got into an argument, it doesn't look good at all. So just forget about doing that. Don't do it. Don't even, don't even think about it. The person's already stayed there. That's Done and over with. Now, if they said something that wasn't true or they used profanity or something like that, then you have some grounds for actually having those reviews removed. So get in touch with Airbnb, get in touch with HomeAway, wherever you have your listings. And if you see something that's not true or, you know, that's vulgar, you can have those removed. And we've done that as well. So.
Don'T respond with an angry tone. And it's easy to tell that through your text. So that's number one. And then acknowledge that you've read the guest's review and you understand their frustration and then let them know in the response, well, really, you're letting future renters know that you already took care of the issue. So let's say it was an air conditioning unit that went out in an apartment or one of your properties in one of your vacation rentals and it was uncomfortable. Well, instead of saying, you know, had you told us that the AC went out? Or that's the other thing. Sometimes they don't tell you something went wrong until you see it in the review. But you don't want to respond to that and put any blame on the guest, really. You just want to acknowledge it. You want to have a sincere apology and you want to address future renters, letting them know in the response that whatever issue was there, you've taken care of. So if it was a housekeeping issue, you can simply say, you know, really sorry, we dropped the ball. We've talked with our housekeeping team already and we're double checked to make sure that we have everything perfect for next time. And maybe something like, you know, we hope to be able to make it up to you next time. Something very apologetic that addresses the issue and that addresses future renters. Internet, for example, sometimes that may go out, there's just a storm or something like that, and you can simply say, you know, we had the Internet go out and we double checked it and we're back to super high WI fi speeds. You know, whatever it is, you just want to address physical future concerns. We don't want to just respond defensively and then finally just thank them again for their feedback and maybe end with another apology or that you hope to make it up to them next time. Now, a lot of times guests will leave reviews that are good, but then in their private comments, which Airbnb and most listing sites have a private comment section, too, that's where they maybe give you some really good feedback. Something, you know, it was a great Stay. But the bedroom would have been much better if you had more blackout curtains or something like that. The private feedback is really, really important to read. And also make sure that you stay on top of. Most guests, leave good reviews. Not all your guests leave reviews. So I do highly encourage that you ask for them. I don't personally ask for know, five star reviews. I think that's kind of, kind of weird, cheesy, like, hey, leave me a five star review. No, I think just, just leave me whatever review you think we deserved. We hope you had a, a great stay. And if there's anything we need to know, you know, let us know in the feedback. So monitor them. You know, the way I do it now, we, we've, we've got thousands of reviews and it really, I gotta say, it's like one of the most difficult times for me is to sit down. I like to see the bad reviews, you know, because I want to fix whatever's broken or, you know, just make sure that future guests have the best day possible. And so because we're getting so many reviews, we get some bad ones in there. And when I get a compiled list of the negative reviews, man, it really puts a damper in my day. It's like, dang it, you know, whatever it is, even if it wasn't true from the guests, it's just, it's hard to read the negative ones. But just remember, don't. So don't respond negatively or with anger. Address future concerns. Read the private feedback. And the great thing is, and you can do this right after reading your negative reviews, read the positive ones, because that's the majority. If we're providing good spaces and great expectations and exceeding those expectations for our guests, the reality is we're going to get awesome reviews and it's great to read those. So just make sure you're monitoring all your reviews. You already know it's important. But if you read a review and it makes you angry, step away before you respond. Because we don't want to have any negativity in there. We just want to address future concerns. So that is it in a nutshell. They're super helpful. I feel really lucky that we're in an industry where we get such good feedback. I mean, when you go into a restaurant, for example, and the waiter comes up and they say, you know, how was the pasta? We don't often say, oh, it tastes like crap. You know, I think you should, you know, you cooked your noodles wrong or something like that. We get great feedback with our, with our rentals. And it allows us to improve and really if there is something that's wrong, we can perfect it and then it's, it's corrected for the future. So we have great stays. So it's a fun industry. I hope you guys are enjoying it. I hope you're scaling. I hope these podcasts are helping you. If you guys are enjoying the content, please subscribe and share it and leave us some comments. Maybe what you want to hear in future episodes. We've really gone through thousands and thousands of reservations. I've learned a lot and I love getting good content out to you guys. So until next time, take care. Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals? Well, it all starts with the properties you acquire. But you want to make sure that you acquire the right properties. I want to give you my ebook that will show you how to do just that. There is no charge. It's my gift to you for being one of our subscribers. Just go to restmethods.com that's rest methods dot com.
