Airbnb Reviews 

Airbnb pushes hosts to accept direct bookings and for very short stays. If they do not accept than their property will be shown up on the end of the list and possible guest won’t find it. The result, a host must accept anything and can cancel what is not interesting. This attitude imposed by Airbnb is extremely unfriendly for the guests. If you decide to book over Airbnb, always contact the host before booking. This guarantees you that the host is also happy with you coming. Other option is to book through a local agency that complies with national law and regulation. In case something goes wrong they are responsible to look for a suitable property. Besides it may work out cheaper, Airbnb can charge up to 20% on commission.

I wanted to spend eastern holidays in Northern Spain and booked 3 airbnb-apartments. What happened? All 3 hosts now cancelled the bookings(obviously because over eastern they found somebody who paid more) and I was forced to book something else with booking.com which costs double price. No reimbursement for this higher price by Airbnb.

We always had very nice Appartments or Rooms.

Never had Problems with the Hosts.

Booked 2000EU apartment, clicked wrong button by error. IMMEDIATELY contacted both host/support to make them aware. Host happily ignored all mails so did support. THREE MONTHS LATER my 2000EU is given to the host via a "trial" I was not even aware of.

Be very careful with this poo box of a company

I have been working as a host with airbnb for 5 years now. I've never had any trouble. If there were problems with guests, airbnb supported me very well. Thank you very much for the good cooperation.

airbnb could not control all hosts and their apartments around the world. if you got a dirty apartment which absolutely out of the description. and i should pay more than 400 euros for the cancellation fee. its absolutely shame and they still dont answer my required. and some host made some drama for more charge.

DO NOT USE THIS SITE EVER! Their customer service is worse than any other company I have ever used! It is just as bad whether you are a guest or a host. Use VRBO instead!

Hosts can cancel reservation, without explanations and only for a small penalty! So if you have corresponding costs like flights, ferries, courses, airbnb won't cover for your expenses!
That's a policy, which guests are not enough aware of.

Prices: ok
Room: not really good...
But no real problem

When traveling on a limited budget, there is no better alternative. That simple... It's extremely easy to find exactly what you want, from up high in the mountains to the perfect, cozy place at the sea. Ratings are honest and reflect what to expect. 5 stars for AirBnB!

It is not user friendly to announce new terms and conditions with pages over pages of text and no indication what exactly changed.

This Company is so bad. As an owner you have very few information on the guests, no copy of ID, no postal address once somebody want to book your property. Most of time there is no review as guests when they have a bad review register otherwise... they don't follow the identity of the guests ...they can register again and again... even if they are really bad!!!
You don't know who is coming in your property, you don't even have all the names of all the guests... so Airbnb just ask you to say "YES" to your guests without any informations. Once the booking is accepted, most of the time guests are reluctant to give more information , even just a copy of ID or the postal address. Also you don't have any contract signed by the guests, if you have pb with him, it's complicated to call Airbnb. By experience I called them one time when a guest did not come for check out and did not give back my keys... the answer of the call center was "I have to close this phone call because you don't give me the right 4 last digit of your bank account number" which BTW was right... I had my bank statement in front of me with the credit transaction AIRBNB...
Anyway no help at all from Airbnb , when you have a pb, don't count on them... no help at all... and they have the deposit ... so if you need to be reimburse of damages by the deposit ... just nothing, no contract, no deposit, no help from Airbnb. Very bad experience and so bad service from the inexistant "call center".I was obliged to change 2 lockers at my charge... 100$...
I must say also that the most of time Airbnb provides bad people who wants travel discreetly without giving their ID and basic information about them. I had several guests visited by several prostitutes ( you always learn that later...). This never happened before with other websites... Airbnb does not care, they manage the payment and the deposit and you just have to shut your mouth...
If you don't want have pb, or you care your home, believe me avoid them...

We had a horrible experience during our visit in Tuscany, Italy. We booked a stay at Roberta & Chiara "4 People Apartment in Heaven" in Casole d'Elsa. The photos on AirBnb looked very nice and charming. So was the first impression when we arrived at the apartment.

Unfortunately everything turned when we looked inside the apartment and in some corners. Dirt, spiders and spiderwebs, cockroaches and mosquitos everywhere. As we were traveling with a little child, we decided not to sleep in the apartment and after one night in our car, we called the host in order to leave early.

When facing AirBnb with pictures that we have taken, we were refunded ONLY 35% of the money we paid for our stay. The reason they gave us is that someone needs to accept insects, bugs, spiders and mold when staying in an apartment in the countryside. This is an absolutely unacceptable statement and I cannot recommend anybody to stay with AirBnb!!! I will never book again and regret that I lost almost 1000EUR for this horrible experience.

The worst is, that due to the small refund, AirBnb won't let me post a review on their website!!! That explains why the apartment has only positive reviews!!!

Super Portal!

Airbnb has made my stay in Berlin a very frictionless process. Great customer service, apartments that i stayed in exceeded my expectations and the hosts were really welcoming and awesome. It gave me the opportunity to live in a new city as if i was a local which is the best added benefit i have now found in traveling.

Have travelled many times with Airbnb. The website and organization are perfect, many extremely useful details. They take care of their guests and of the hosts. Congratulations to this thought-through offering.

Many of the listings are first class and I've made absolutely unique experiences that you can never have in a hotel room. On top of everything, it's a lot cheaper than alternatives.

I travel a lot privately and on business purposes - the first thing I look up everywhere is what's available on Airbnb and mostly I'm very happy with that. Extremely recommended.

This review applies to Airbnb US and HQ. However since many Airbnb Danish guests use Airbnb when they travel in the US, this applies to them as well. Also Airbnb uses the same platform worldwide.

Review integrity is unique at Airbnb, not only in its industry but also among all internet companies. This is a huge win for guests as any intelligent person who is risk averse will select a host with many good reviews and be fairly sure that they will get a good experience. This is because on average Airbnb reviews are very accurate. Possibly only Ebay can compare with Airbnb as far as Review integriy. Many other internet companies like Yelp and Tripadvisor cannot compare with Airbnb and pose severe risks to users and guests. From my experience Yelp and Tripadvisor are corrupt and unreliable and their reviews are junk on average and/or do not have the right people and right systems to handle what they try to sell to the public.

Airbnb invests massive resources and very smart and nice people to ensure the integrity and accuracy of reviews. They keep improving although there is still room for improvement. I would like to see Airbnb add star reviews for guests too not just hosts; similarly to what Ebay does where both buyers and sellers are star rated (not just description rated). This would ensure that each Airbnb transaction is smooth for both guests and hosts and that Airbnb would succeed even more.

Airbnb has no competition; all its competitors do not have the resources, ethics, integrity, people and systems that Airbnb has. In fact some of Airbnb competitors, including well recognized names such as Tripadvisor, are essentially scam operations. I am not familiar with VBRO and other non pay per booking operations so I cannot rate them but if VBRO and other were smart they would switch to a pay per booking model so that hosts do not have to pay a huge fee upfront.

In essence many of the recent reviews of angry guests about Airbnb are either fake or the guests did not take the appropriate precautions such as choosing a host with many positive reviews so they get what they ask for.

Another area of improvement for Airbnb would be adding the ability for hosts to include special amenities such as indoor pool vs outdoor pool, private garage etc because many guests do actively look for special amenities but the current Airbnb menu does not allow for that search while many of Airbnb competitors do allow more options in search.

Airbnb has made huge improvements recently. I had an old Truspilot review of Airbnb with 2 stars that you can read below.

OLD REVIEW BELOW
------------------------------
Airbnb is biased in favor of guests against hosts. This is proved by the fact that guests are not reviewed with stars in public and their star ratings are hidden. This is a huge issue because encourages guests' misconduct and abuse of hosts and hosts are reluctant to write bad reviews about their guests because they want to keep attracting new guests. Many issues between guests and hosts would be avoided and prevented if guests' stars appeared on their public profile but currently they are hidden by Arirbnb. Guests star ratings are not shared on their public profile to hosts. Having stars published on every user profile (guest or host) would also help the better guests have better experiences on Airbnb, not just help hosts.
Airbnb values transparency and truthful reviews that is great. However there is a double standards. Host profiles show stars for categories such as check in, communication, overall satisfaction. These stars are left by guests in their review for hosts. However when hosts review guests and leave them stars; those stars are hidden so hosts do not have transparent and full information about the guests. Also showing the stars for the guests would provide an incentive for every guest to behave and would save a lot of money for Airbnb shareholders by decreasing the amount of time dealing with guests hosts disputes.

Hosts need to be rewarded for protecting themselves from scammers not penalized. I had this guest from Malaysia who was a liar, racist and a scammer; I hosted him and his family and he took advantage of me and my services for a few days; then he simply complained to airbnb and the airbnb case manager anna canceled the reservation and penalized my ranking in the search results. So instead of feeling that they came to my aid, I was penalized for trying to protect myself from a scammer. Not every guest on Airbnb is a good guest and Airbnb needs to stop hiding the star review information that hosts leave for guests and be fully transparent so each guest is reviewed both with written reviews and stars. I feel bad that I could not leave a review or stars for this scammer.

Another huge issue is that there is no transparency about rankings. I have received over 42 reviews all 5 stars but one 4 star for check in and my listings sometimes do not show up in search or are penalized against other listings with worst reviews than mine and Airbnb will not explain why. So guests looking for places cannot find my listings because they are not showing up in the search results are they are buried.

Another issue is that the escalation level of customer service is not subject to review by the user. If I talk to an Airbnb customer service rep, I will be sent a survey to review my experience but if I were to talk to a "case manager"; the escalation level of airbnb customer service; no survey will be sent to me. So customer service is very good but case managers are a very mixed bags. They are usually very slow, which can be understood, and some of them provide horrible service and some great service, like Julian who was amazing. So it's very spotty and could easily be solved by sending out surveys about the experience with the case managers.

Airbnb has an excellent platform and customer service is often great. There are many wonderful professionals in customer service at Airbnb. I would have liked to give a 5 star review to Airbnb because they definitely have the potential and resources; however some of their leadership in customer service and possibly overall is very questionable and that creates huge problems for Airbnb guests and Airbnb hosts and for their safety.

I have not been a guest on Airbnb yet but I have been a host for a few months and I have over 30 reviews from guests and my average star rating is 5 star ratings on every category. I have met some great guests on Airbnb but I have also had a couple of horrible experiences where I have received inadequate support from Airbnb or where Airbnb customer service actually made my experience much worse

I have met a couple of lying, deceitful, or racist guests on Airbnb and Airbnb is unwilling to fix this.

I had a horrible U.S. Airbnb customer service experience with Jessica H and Delilah B, who were rude, deceitful and abusive and their manager who refuses to speak with me.

I have noticed some bias on several occasions from Airbnb representatives. Airbnb seems to favor guests over hosts, now that there is an abundance of hosts on Airbnb, and women over men many times if there are disputes thus making the community unfair.

They are also sometimes very slow in addressing urgent concerns, and do not always follow their own Airbnb rules but bend them according to "case manager" is on duty so it is unfair and biased and there is no accountability mechanism as sometimes they won't allow or discuss complaints or in fact retaliate instead of appreciating the feedback.

I have also been contacted in the past through Craigslist from Airbnb hired people who claimed to be non-associated with Airbnb but were trying to push their service and make hosts sign up on Airbnb.

One Airbnb guest from Malaysia stole from me, lied to me, harassed me damaged my property and made racist remarks about people from India (I am not from India but I do not like racist people). Airbnb did not protect me appropriately and I lost money and a lot of time. In addition, Airbnb penalized my listings in the search results so that my listings are much harder to find for guests who want to book in the area.

Another Airbnb guest, an organization from Oakland, CA, recently contacted me through Airbnb to stay at one of my locations to do their work. They misled me and I had accepted their reservation based on the information they gave me. After receiving booking confirmation, I found out their name and immediately learned through a google search that they are involved in illegal activities on a regular basis. This guest / organization later confirmed this in writing by messaging me on Airbnb.

As my guests' safety is my priority, I do not allow any guests who are involved in illegal activities to interact with me or any of my guests. I informed Airbnb about this group immediately, Jessica H canceled the reservation, without my authorization, and then lied to me and her colleagues. Airbnb never paid me (of course I did not want any money or any relationship with this group), and then blocked my calendar so I could not accept any other reservations for that date, fined me $100 for the cancellation that they made without my authorization, penalized my listings in the search results so that they harder to find for guests who want to book in the area. They also told me that I was "policing".

As a courtesy, I also informed the guest / group immediately, after consulting with Airbnb on how to do it best, that my locations were not available for them for that date or any future date as they wanted to book additional dates with me.

Airbnb penalized me while in fact I was just protecting the Airbnb community and my guests. I hosted a single mom and her two young children the day that this illegal group representative was supposed to stay with me; so they would have stayed in the same location.

Apparently Delilah B. and her manager were supportive of this group's agenda as they also helped them secure a more expensive room with a different host and donated this guest about $50 to book a room with the other Airbnb host (and they collected the fees from the other host as well in addition to mine).

Delilah B.'s manager won't talk to me even after I was assured that a case manager would contact me but she never did and then I was told that no one would contact me.

I regularly pay my fees to Airbnb, introduced many new happy guests to Airbnb and worked hard to make Airbnb look good, regularly provide valuable feedback to Airbnb about their web site and service and how to improve it, so this is unfortunate, biased, unfair and uncalled for. Delilah B.'s conduct and her manager's were unacceptable, unreasonable and rude.

customer proximity,
innovative,
well represented,
trustful,
friendly,
Enthusiastic,
Convincingly,
Family Friendly

I you as a guest in the future want to book with Airbnb. It's a great site, lots of rooms, apartments and wood houses around in the world. BUT...
If youre looking for a room the search is always pointing you to 'recommended listings' but these listing are most often not recommended by anyone but Airbnb - who never stayed - or sometimes they has not even been a single traveler staying there. It's a need system at Airbnb and they want to give all new listings a chance. BUT... Normally the word recommended is covering the biggest chance of a positive experience - but in this case it's a lottery ticket.

Watch out and take care. Go for the hosts with at least 5-10 reviews if you want to base your stay on multiple reviews.

I've just had my first airbnb experience last week and it was simply amazing! This might really be the new way to travel and to experience foreign cities, people and cultures.
I stayed at a couples place in Paris. They were very welcoming and even picked mie up from the airport. I had a privat room in their absolutely breathtaking city apartment.
for just 45$ I could stay in the middle of Paris (about 5 min wak to the Eifel Tower) where a hotel would cost 100$ at least! And I even had my personal tour guides who told me were to get the best coffee and where to find those amazing little hidden shops where shopping is still fun ;)
The booking process was easy and fast. My host responded within 6 hours or so. I will definitely use airbnb again on my next trip! Five stars!
Norman