The author did not book the property through Airbnb. Had he done so, he would have learned what we do in these rare situations. His article missed a couple key points:
1) If a host cancels a reservation on a guest, a default review is generated stating that the host canceled X days before arrival. The guest can modify this auto-generated review if he wants to add color to it.
2) The host is penalized monetarily if he cancels on guests more than once per 90 days. The penalty is $100 if the cancellation is within one week of arrival, otherwise $50. Hosts that repeatedly cancel on guests may be removed from the site.
As a result of these policies, host cancellations are rare. Most occurrences are honest mistakes and not from repeat offenders.
I also work at Airbnb and would like to follow up on what Nate just said. Our review system is actually stronger than all the aforementioned sites because it is transaction based, i.e., only people who complete the transaction through Airbnb can leave a review.
Non-transaction based review sites like Yelp, VRBO, etc., are plagued with fake reviews by owners, guests, and competitors. On sites like that, how do you know that those glowing reviews you just read weren't written by the owners, their staff, or their friends? You don't.
By tying our double-sided review system to actual transactions you can have almost complete confidence that the reviews you are reading are the result of someone staying with, or hosting, another member of our community.
We have reached out to the author of the article to articulate this, but rest assured, had he booked through Airbnb he would have been able to write the review he wanted.
In addition to that, he wouldn't have sent money blindly to someone. We would be holding it until after he checks in and reminding the owner via email of the booking to prevent exactly this kind of situation from happening. And in the rare occasions when it does, our 24/7 customer team would have stepped in and helped to find him a new place or issue a complete and fast refund.
Sorry, but no. If I was an unscrupulous host and wanted to boost my listing, the first thing I'd do is have a bunch of friends (or fake accounts) book nights on my listing and leave glowing reviews. I'm out maybe $100 for Airbnb fees and now I have a slew of awesome reviews. What are the odds that this doesn't happen all the time?
When I was in Vietnam last year I booked a few cheap hotels in the 10-20 U$ a night range (nice ones by the way!) on Agoda.com.
Often the reviews went like "best breakfast in Asia" or "I will come back to Vietnam just to stay in this Hotel" but when I went there, they where nice but not THAT nice.
Once I went here http://www.agoda.com/asia/vietnam/hoi_an/sunflower_hotel.htm... as the reviews where incredibly good: but as I found out the internet was very slow, breakfast was a deception, the reception a bit rude and they even gave me a smaller room.
So I wrote a review adding to be careful about fake reviews.
Sure enough Agoda did not publish it and they did not even respond to my email asking why.
I did not expect a Facebook debit card but at least a "thank you" :)
After all I helped them spotting cheaters!
I was completely ignored.
The result is a side flooded by fake reviews costing a couple of bucks each to the Hotel manager.
That's cheaper than Adwords :)
Like? If I emailed a few friends around the country and asked them to help me out like that, how would Airbnb know?
I'm not saying they haven't considered it, I'm saying they can't stop it. Making the claim that a transaction based review system is inherently trustworthy seems either naive or disingenuous.
And if they have considered it, what are they doing about it? I'll bet you a thousand dollars if the suggested scenario happens, there is no mechanism in place to alert anyone, stop it, or deal with it, no matter how big the tracks left. Do you know how many of the NYC listings are pure scam?
I'll grant their review system is set up from the get-go to be the best of anyone out there.
The author did not book the property through Airbnb. Had he done so, he would have learned what we do in these rare situations. His article missed a couple key points:
1) If a host cancels a reservation on a guest, a default review is generated stating that the host canceled X days before arrival. The guest can modify this auto-generated review if he wants to add color to it.
2) The host is penalized monetarily if he cancels on guests more than once per 90 days. The penalty is $100 if the cancellation is within one week of arrival, otherwise $50. Hosts that repeatedly cancel on guests may be removed from the site.
As a result of these policies, host cancellations are rare. Most occurrences are honest mistakes and not from repeat offenders.