Why I Don’t Care About 5 Star Reviews on Airbnb

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What's up guys? It's James here and in today's video, I'm going to talk to you about why I do not obsess over five star reviews on Airbnb. Now, this is a bit of a different video, I wanted to put this together because it recently I know this is something that I've known for a while, but just it just kind of clicked. Finally, recently when someone reached out and sent me an email saying, Hey, James, I noticed because I've shared some screenshots of my listings performance with our with our email list, and I said, Hey, guys, check it out. Look what I've done with this property in the last three months now sharing that on our most recent investment property that we bought for Airbnb that we brought in over $80,000 in bookings now we're just over $90,000 in total bookings, and just our first three months having it live. It's incredible. I wanted to share that with our readers. And one of the people looked at that screenshot and took the time to reply back to me and said, Hey, James, how did you manage to do this, when you have such bad reviews on your listing, and that puzzled me, I thought, well, that's kind of silly. I looked at the screenshot he was looking at and that 4.68 stars at a five, that's a pretty great rating in my book, and I went to check on Airbnb and check our listing and make sure I wasn't missing something, make sure things weren't at a date. And somehow we got a bunch of bad reviews. And sure enough, we actually just slightly above that we increased our rate, we're about 4.7 stars now. So 4.7 stars out of five, and this guy thought these are terrible reviews, or these aren't really good reviews. And so I messaged him back to clarify. And what I found out was this person just like a lot of other hosts out there, not to his fault at all. But he just, you know, had this idea in his head as a lot of hosts do that you need to have five star views and nothing but five star views in order to perform well on Airbnb. And so I went back and forth them and I want to share this with you guys, I want to put together a video talking about this, because I want to shed some light on something that I think will make a really, really big difference. Now before we dive into this, before we go through all the details, I do want to let you guys know there's a link down the scription down below to a couple of free trainings. Now one that I'm really excited about that we just recently launched just recently put together, I worked on this for weeks, it's really amazing, is a free training that's gonna cover everything you need to know in order to be a successful short term rental investor, in order to actually go out and buy properties, invest in properties for short term rental and do it very, very successfully. So I highly recommend that start with you check out that link in the description down below. Register for that training, grab yourself a spot before it's too late. Make sure you go and register for that training. It's brand new, we're going to give you all kinds of tools and strategies, I'm going to go through the three crucial components to being a successful short term rental investor. So make sure you check it out. Now if you're looking at this video, you're watching it you're saying hey, I don't have the money right now to go and buy a property for Airbnb but I do you want to manage other people's properties on Airbnb, then we've got some free trainings down the description down below for you as well, you're not being left out here. So you can check out the training as well. That is how to earn a full time income managing other people's properties on Airbnb, that's how I got started personally was managing other people's properties on Airbnb. So if you want to get started managing properties for other people build a six figure income and do it without having to buy rent or furnish any properties at all, not put any of your money into starting the business that I highly recommend you check out that training in the description down below as well. All that being said, let's go into it. And let's start talking about why it is that this was such an interesting conversation to me and what I want, what I think there is for a lot of people to get out of that they can use to improve their results with Airbnb. And really what it comes down to is I think that because of I think largely because of superhosts stats, a lot of hosts have this idea in their head, that better reviews equals more money. And though that is somewhat true, I'm not saying that's not true, I'm not saying by any means that you shouldn't care at all about the reviews you get, and that you should just run a crappy property, I am saying that it's not directly correlated in the way that a lot of people think. And what I mean by that is that you can look at a property with, you know, good reviews, 4.7 stars, and another property with perfect reviews, five stars, for example, or 4.99 star review. And oftentimes the property that has the lower rating is actually making way more money even if all else looks to be equal. And the reason for that is because not just you know, having great reviews is a reflection of how well your property lives up to the expectations that you set for your guests. It does not reflect how valuable you've made your property. And what a lot of hosts do is they fall into this trap where they think that because they can't afford to get any bad reviews at all. They really obsess over all the minutiae, and they spend so much time focusing on every little thing and pleading with their guests to make sure that they get that five star view that they never take the time to really zoom out and look at the business as a whole and think to themselves, how can I add more value? You know, a lot of hosts honestly are trying to kind of lower the bar lower the expectations for their property so that they can exceed those expectations and get a better view. Whereas the successful hosts are trying to raise the bar constantly. They're trying to set expectations even higher so they can command more for their listings so they can get more for their listing. They're ready to go and try to play catch up and actually meet those expectations that are set really high. A perfect example this one I like to give that relates really well to my properties, one of the things we identified that can add a lot more value to our property was having a hot tub. And by adding a hot tub to the property, we are able to charge more as a nightly rate, we're able to get more bookings throughout the low season, because the expectation of bar is higher for just a better stay a more attractive property. Now with that comes some risk of potential negative reviews. You know, it's one more thing to upkeep we have to make sure that hot tub is kept in pristine condition, we have to make sure it's working at all times, we have to make sure it's clean at all times, we have to do everything to make sure that is up kept. So that means that the expectations are higher, it means that we have to do more to meet and exceed the guests expectations. Now, with that comes a higher risk that we're going to fall short. It's just a reality, you know, you can look at it very objectively. And I'm not saying that we're just going to go well, that's just the reality is we're not going to be able to keep this thing clean, we're not going to be able to keep it operational, I'm just saying, hey, look, is it easier to keep a hot tub running and functional when you have a hot tub, or to not have to keep a hot tub running and functional, because you don't have one? Well, it's obviously easier to not do that at all. So if you're trying to lower the bar, lower the expectations and make everything a lot easier, then you're not going to ultimately get that hot tub and you're not going to make the money for it. Now this is just one single example. But there's lots of these. And the other thing is because for me, I don't actually go and manage everything day to day, it's not me that's dying to go and make sure the hot tub is clean. It's not me personally, that's having to go and make sure the hot tub is running. We've got team members in place and systems in place for all that. So it's not stressful to me. Now that's the other big thing is that I see a lot of hosts getting caught up in the minutiae. And frankly, I don't care if we get a four star review, it just doesn't matter that much to me. And what I mean is not to say that I don't look at it, it's more to say that I don't get stressed about it. And that's where I see hosts making a really big mistake is they get really stressed out. And they get all caught up in the negativity around, I actually think it's a good thing if we get a four star review. Because if we get a five star review, that tells us that we're doing a fantastic job. And that's great. That is fantastic. And I like that that's always of course what I strive for. But whenever we get a review that's lower than four stars, it gives us really valuable insight into what we can do better. That's the only time you know, if someone gives us a perfect glowing five star review. There's no real room for improvement on that. There's no nothing I can glean from that, that tells me here's where I should focus to make the experience even better. I can try to go above and beyond. But it's a lot harder to identify how to do that whenever we get a review, it's lower than five stars, then I know exactly what we need to focus on. Maybe they say, hey, the cleanliness wasn't up to snuff. Well, we need to really dial up our cleaning team, we need to get them we're doing even better. Or maybe they say I wish there was this amenity or there wasn't enough of this or there wasn't enough of that? Well, okay, let's go get it. Because ultimately, every time I take that feedback and action on it, it means that there's going to be even more value provided to the future guests, it means that the relisting is going to perform even better going into the future. Now if you're constantly scared of these four star reviews, or lower, and you try to avoid them like the plague, and you try to always defend against them whenever they come in and find reasons that that guest is wrong and had crazy unrealistic expectations. Well, you're never going to improve, you're never going to make your listing better, you're never going to add more value. And so your listing is never going to perform better. You know, the results speak for themselves, you know, these hosts that reached out to me was awestruck, by the way that we were able to make as much money as we were and still have 4.68 star reviews, think about it 4.68 star reviews, 4.7 star reviews, that's really, really good. You know, that's a not over a 90% customer satisfaction rate that's really strong. I don't look at that and say, Wow, our reviews are really low. I look at that and say, Okay, we're doing really well. And there's room for improvement, I know exactly what we need to focus on. And we're focusing on it. And I've got the team members in place and the systems in place. So that stuff can get improved. And it's not taking up a whole bunch of my time day to day, that's the really big thing too is that, hey, this is really passive for me still, even though there's stuff that needs to be improved on. And so we have the systems and the teams in place to be able to make that deal to happen without all the stress. So again, I thought it's a really valuable lesson. I think it's really valuable for a lot of hosts to learn, because hey, you can have a lot less stress and make a lot more money doing it if you just shift the way that you look at things and have the right systems and strategies in place. Again, if you want more of that if you want more of the kind of overall way that we view this business, all the strategies, we use the three key components that I need, I see that you absolutely need for success investing in short term rentals. And if you want some of the tools that we use to set up for our team, set those systems in place so that it can be really passive and really stress free. Then again, check out the link in the description down below to our free training on how to invest successfully in short term rentals how to successfully buy vacation homes, just check that out. I highly recommend it. It's completely free. Register for it now. Now if you're looking to do the same thing, but you want to manage other people's properties on Airbnb, and you want to make as much money as possibly as possible without all the stress of it. Then again, I highly recommend her other free training LinkedIn description down below, that's going to show you how to earn a full time income managing other people's properties on Airbnb, either route is really good one's really great for if you're getting started and want to do it without investing in your own money. The other is really great if you want to get investing into real estate. That's what I did. You know, I started out managing other people's properties, and then took that money and fueled it into and funneled it into buying properties for short term rental and growing my wealth long term. Now, both strategies are great. So I highly recommend you check out one or the other the training depending on which is the best fit for what your goals are. Now, that being said, if you did like this video, if you thought it was insightful, if you agree with what I'm saying here, then let me know show me your support, give me a thumbs up hit that like button, it helps you massively growing this channel if you just hit that like button because it helps more people to see these videos. So please take a quick second. Now really, there you go actually do it. You know, I know a lot of people ask you to do it. But please take a quick second actually go and hit that like button. And also, you know, go down there and actually hit the subscribe button. I know again, a lot of people ask you to do this. But hey, we post two new videos every single week on this channel. So I want to make sure you stay up to date with all those new videos make sure you go and actually hit that subscribe button to stay up to date with the channel. And all that said I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. I hope this video was really valuable to you and I'll see you in the next one.