8 Steps For Dealing With a Bad Vacation Rental Review
What to do When you Get a Bad Review on Your Vacation Rental
Getting a bad review as a vacation rental owner is no fun at all. However, what most owners neglect to think about is that bad reviews can be good for you in the long run, because negative feedback gives you a chance to improve. Don’t forget that negative feedback also gives potential guests a chance to see whether or not you have a professional attitude. If you respond to a negative review with nothing but blame, for instance, you may scare off potential guests, and it just doesn’t reflect well on your business.
Getting bad reviews is unavoidable, so rather than despairing next time you get one, we’ve written up an easy 8-step guide to help you deal with negative feedback on your vacation rental in a more constructive way.
#1: Don’t Take It Too Personally
While getting your first few bad reviews might sting a little bit, don’t let that sting make you bitter towards the customer. Bad reviews aren’t personal and even if it may seem like it, there’s no point in getting too upset about it. Just take a step back, breathe, and try not to see it as an entirely negative experience. After all, negative reviews are often full of valuable feedback when all is said and done.
#2: Read the Review from an Objective Viewpoint
It may not be easy to get into the mind of a disgruntled guest, but reading the review from an objective perspective can help you figure out exactly what went wrong to lead to them leaving a negative review. This is also another reason it’s important not to take bad reviews personally–when too much emotion is involved, it’s hard to look at things from an objective viewpoint and understand exactly what went wrong in order to fix the situation.
#3: Take Stock of How You Can Improve
Although getting bad reviews isn’t fun, there is a silver lining: bad reviews and feedback are good ways to find out what’s not working for your short-term rental business. Whether your negative reviews come from lack of communication or from problems that could’ve been avoided by simple maintenance or better cleanings, getting this type of feedback gives you the opportunity to step back and take stock of how you can improve for the future. Oftentimes, mistakes can lead to lessons learned, and that’s especially true in the vacation rental industry.
#4: Reach Out to the Guest Directly
Before you publicly respond to negative feedback, think about reaching out to the guest directly to see if you can resolve the issue between yourselves. After all, if you can solve the problem, the guest may decide to edit or change their review to reflect that the issue at hand has been fixed. Communicating with guests is number one in the short-term rental business, and focusing on disgruntled guests in particular can help to resolve this type of problem from the get-go.
#5: Publicly Respond to the Review
If communicating with the guest doesn’t resolve the issue, it might be a good idea to move onto the next step: responding publicly to the review. This is your chance to both explain your side of the story as well as to showcase the professional manner in which you dealt with the situation.
This means it’s important to keep your tone as even and objective as possible in your reply–you wouldn’t want anyone to misconstrue your writing as being sarcastic or rude. Address the concerns of the guest and point out what you did to try to resolve their issues in a polite and professional tone.
The guest who left the negative feedback is more likely to respond well if you just try your best to be reasonable and respectful of whatever issues they may have dealt with while staying on your property.
#6: Use Feedback to Create a Process to Minimize The Chances of a Bad Review
Once you’ve responded to the review and put the whole situation behind you, now would be the time to use the feedback you’ve received to create a process aimed at minimizing the chances that you’ll get a bad review for this specific issue once again. For instance, if a guest left negative feedback after they were locked out of the rental for a few hours with no way to gain access to it, it might be time to look into keyless entry options that could help prevent an issue like this from happening again.
#7: Encourage All of Your Guests to Leave Reviews
There’s no way to entirely avoid getting bad reviews, no matter how hard you try–some guests just won’t be happy with their experience, and that’s okay. However, the more good reviews you get, the less those bad reviews will count towards your rating on short-term rental sites. Therefore, it’s always a good idea to encourage your guests to leave reviews and feedback. Even good reviews can give you something to learn from, as sometimes guests can leave feedback about things that they think you can improve upon, even when they had an overall good experience.
#8: Let the Good Outweigh the Bad and Stay Positive
The best possible thing to do after getting a bad review is to stay positive. If your short-term rental is bringing in revenue every month, one bad review isn’t going to ruin your entire business–in fact, it’s just a sign that you’re growing larger, because every single guest isn’t going to have the best experience of their life, and it’s unrealistic to expect that they will. So overall, it’s a better strategy to let the good outweigh the bad and keep your outlook positive. Not only will this improve your attitude, but it’ll also help you to deal with any more bad reviews you get in the future.
Let Your Property Manager Deal With Bad Reviews For You
Getting bad reviews is one of the worst parts of working in the short-term rental business, but if you follow our guide, you won’t have to worry about how to handle them in the future.
However, if you’d rather let your property manager take care of bad reviews for you, think about Going Local. With LocalVR, we manage all guest communications and complaints, so you don’t have to worry about a thing when it comes to guest management on your short-term rental property. For more information about how we aid homeowners in improving their revenue, booking rate, and guest communications, check out our Program page.