Currently, when reviewing an exchange, the categories are:
Guest: Trustworthiness, Politeness, Cleanliness
Host: Communication, Home Matches Description, Cleanliness
I have some issues and some recommendations about these to improve them and offer a better and more useful review.
Trustworthiness: To me, this is a vague term and it’s not completely clear what it includes. I suggest that it be replaced by “Responsibility”… this would be defined in general as takes care of the home… didn’t break/damage/lose anything, and if they did, informed the host immediately and repaired or replaced the damaged/lost item; didn’t move or rearrange furnishings, or if they did asked host for permission and restored items to their original place if requested; followed host’s arrival/departure instructions; took care of pets or plants if requested; etc.
Politeness: To me, this seems like a relatively low-value attribute. Yes, it’s nice that a person is polite, but a better review category is “Communication”. It doesn’t make sense to me that “Communication” is in the host review but “Politeness” is in the Guest review. An exchange is a two-way communication between a host and a guest. Ideally, it should be polite, respectful, informative, honest, clear, and prompt. It seems odd to me that the burden is only on the host to provide all of those attributes, but the guest is judged only on “politeness”.
Cleanliness: I agree that this should be on both Guest and Host reviews.
My other suggestion is to provide a “weighting” to these categories when calculating an overall rating. In my opinion, some of them are more important than others, in the following order:
Least importance: Communication: (not saying this is unnecessary, only that it is the least important of the three factors for each side of an exchange). The very fact that an exchange was completed indicates that there was adequate communication to do the exchange.
Moderate importance: Cleanliness: Of course it is important for a host to provide a clean home and for the guest to clean the home to the state in which they found the home. But if a home is less than perfect cleanliness, it does not necessarily ruin an entire stay. Yes, it is an inconvenience and worthy of note. But it is something that can be rectified relatively easily.
Greatest Importance: Responsibility and Home Matches Description: The reason these are the most important categories is that deficiencies in these have the most impact on a guest’s experience of the stay and the impact on the home of the guest’s visit. If something significant about the home is not as described (e.g. a pool or A/C advertised in a hot southern climate but not actually functional or present in the home, then this has the potential of damaging a guest’s enjoyment of the entire stay; or if a guest breaks something significant and expensive like a TV or a window and does not repair/replace or pay for it, it has the potential of a major cost or inconvenience to the host.)
Therefore, I suggest that the final score of a review should be weighted something like this:
50% Responsibility and Home Matches Description
30% Cleanliness
20% Communication
Of course, the actual percentages are open to debate, but I believe that some of these factors are more important than others.
I know that many members are very passionate about this topic of reviews so I’d be curious to see what others think 