> need to read "between the lines" of misleading representations of properties.
I've never had a problem with this, but I also don't bother staying anywhere that doesn't have a 4-star or better average. If you just set your filter at >= 4 stars, then these problems go away, and we also comb through the reviews of our top picks to make sure there's nothing unexpected. Consequently, we've had nothing but good experiences.
TFA addresses why reviews are inflated and misleading:
>Airbnb uses a rating system in which both the host and tenant can publicly provide feedback to one another, which both parties then use to prove their credibility in the future. Because of that, there is a built-in incentive to avoid confrontation, which helps explain why Airbnb hosts consistently receive higher ratings than hotels reviewed on TripAdvisor, according to research out of Boston University and the University of Southern California. If a customer has a negative experience on Airbnb, they might be better off just moving on instead of leaving a negative review. Choose the latter option, and you could come across as too demanding by other prospective hosts, or, in extreme cases, even receive a retaliatory review.
What's going on here is that Airbnb has essentially made a pass/fail review system, where 5 stars is pass and anything less is fail. Thus, short of a visit being completely terrible and the host awful, I would feel bad giving anything less than a 5 star review, since it would adversely affect the listing and the host.
On one hand, this does encourage hosts (and guests I suppose) to do their best. On the other hand, this eliminates honest reviewing, making reviews either "Best stay ever!!!!!1 (5/5)" or "This place sucks! The host is terrible!(1/5)"
A review system should just be a series of factual questions that are aimed at determining whether a potential customer is likely to have problems, be satisfied, or enjoy their stay. And the scores should be subjective; e.g. if you're single then the questions that impact a family should be eliminated from calculating the score.
For example, down the hall, there's a dog with a persistent high-pitched bark. If I'm reviewing them, ideally, I just answer a simple question, "are there persistent noise disturbances from neighbors?" Yes.
I think the reason it's not done this way is because you'd have to put a lot of thought into maintaining the questions.
I meant that the review score should tell you whether or not you need to read between the lines. If you don't want to read between the lines, stick to results with 4+ star reviews (maybe 4.5+ star reviews). I _also_ read other reviews out of an abundance of caution and to give some insight into how the top results differ. We should be able to agree that this is not meaningfully "reading between the lines" even if we don't agree about the reliability of average review score as an indicator.
I've never had a problem with this, but I also don't bother staying anywhere that doesn't have a 4-star or better average. If you just set your filter at >= 4 stars, then these problems go away, and we also comb through the reviews of our top picks to make sure there's nothing unexpected. Consequently, we've had nothing but good experiences.