The guest left a 3-star review but they never had a problem with my property…
After managing over 50,000 guests across 40+ cities, I’ve seen this scenario play out more times than I can count.
A guest books your property. Everything goes perfectly—spotless space, seamless check-in, responsive communication. But somewhere during their trip, things go sideways. Maybe their Uber broke down. Maybe the tour they booked was a disaster. Maybe the restaurant they were excited about was closed.
Then they leave you 3 stars.
What happened? Their overall trip experience bled into how they rated your property.
The Connection Between Guest Experiences and Your Reviews
Your guests are booking tours, cooking classes, food tours, and activities right from the same app where they found your listing.
And when those experiences go sideways? Your review score takes the hit.
Let me give you a real example:
A guest stays at one of your properties. The property itself? Perfect. No issues whatsoever. But she booked a cooking class through Airbnb’s experiences platform. The host showed up late. The ingredients were wrong. She spent $150 on what turned out to be a complete disaster.
Then she went back to your property—which, again, was spotless—and left 3 stars.
Why This Matters More Than You Think
After keeping a close eye on review data across our portfolio, we’ve discovered something that catches most hosts completely off guard:
Your review scores aren’t just about your property anymore.
When guests have excellent experiences in your area—memorable tours, amazing food experiences, unique activities—they’re significantly more likely to leave 5-star reviews. Even when minor issues come up with the property itself.
The opposite is also true. A terrible day exploring your city can tank your rating, even when you did everything right as a host.
What We’ve Learned Managing Properties in 40+ Cities
Here are three things worth knowing:
- Guest Mood Matters More Than Most Hosts Realize
Someone who just finished an amazing wine tour through the Douro River in Portugal is in a completely different mindset when writing reviews than someone who spent three hours lost trying to find parking.
We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: guests who have positive experiences outside the property are more generous with their ratings, more forgiving of minor issues, and write longer, more detailed positive reviews.
- The Local Experience Is Part of Your Product Whether You Like It or Not
Guests don’t separate “the Airbnb” from “the trip” in their minds. It’s all one experience.
When they’re filling out that review form, they’re thinking about their entire stay—not just whether your WiFi worked or if the towels were soft. They’re thinking about that pad Thai cooking class in Thailand. They’re thinking about the boat tour that got canceled. They’re thinking about the overall value of their trip.
Your property is excellent, but if the surrounding experience disappoints, your reviews will reflect that—fair or not.
- You Have More Control Over This Than You Think
You can’t control the weather. You can’t control traffic. You can’t control if another Airbnb experience host shows up late.
But you can influence what guests do and how they experience your area.
What Airbnb Experiences Actually Are
If you’ve been using the platform for any length of time, you’ve seen this feature. It’s actually the first screen that pulls up when you open the Airbnb app.
Airbnb Experiences offer all kinds of tours and food courses—pretty much anything you can think of falls under their experiences category. I’ve done a bunch of these myself:
- A wine cruise down the Douro River in Porto, Portugal (amazing experience, by the way)
- A cooking class in Thailand where I learned to make pad Thai (spoiler alert: they put sugar in it—I was a little bummed, but I still indulge)
- Various boat tours, hikes, art classes, photography tours
There’s a huge range of prices and options available.
Why Airbnb Invests So Heavily in Experiences
Airbnb knows that the experiences outside your property really drive those review scores and bring people back to their platform. So they’ve put significant time and effort into building out this part of their app and their company.
You’ve probably noticed that when you sign up as a host, they ask for a lot more information than they used to—your likes, dislikes, where you went to school. All of this is building information on the backend so they can do a better job of matching experiences and hosts with the right guests.
The Benefits for Hosts
While experiences aren’t directly related to your Airbnb business, there are several ways you can benefit:
- Another Revenue Stream
This is an obvious one. You can name your price. If people are willing to pay it, you’ll have people booking.
This allows you to monetize either skills you have or local knowledge of your area. And remember—this doesn’t have to be you personally. You can curate experiences and create a business out of this, just like we do with short-term rentals.
- Build Deeper Connections With Your Guests
Imagine this scenario:
A guest shows up to your property exhausted. They missed their flight. Their Uber didn’t show up. They arrive without their luggage. That’s not a great experience, and if it’s a short stay, it’s going to impact the review they leave.
Now imagine that same guest waking up the next day and going out on a five-hour tour with you or an experience you’ve curated. They have an excellent time.
All those travel troubles become a thing of the past, and they’re much more likely to leave you a glowing review—and a much longer review explaining how they really loved your property and what they were able to do around it.
- Improve Your Review Scores Indirectly
This is the big one most hosts miss.
We know that experiences outside of your property really affect the review guests leave. If someone shows up and has a mediocre time in your city, your reviews will reflect that, even if your property was perfect.
How to Use This Knowledge as a Host
Here are some practical tips for using experiences to your advantage:
Another Tip: Check What’s Already Available in Your Area
If there are a hundred different boat tours, creating another boat tour probably isn’t going to be successful. This comes back to basic supply and demand—the same principles that apply to short-term rentals.
Find something unique, something that’s not already extremely competitive.
Test Your Pricing
If you put your tour out there for $200 and no one’s booking, then lower it to $150 and suddenly you’re getting lots of bookings, you know you’ve found competitive pricing.
Make Sure You’re Actually Available
This comes back to creating a bit of a business out of experiences. Let’s say you’re doing a boat tour because there aren’t many of those around, or maybe you know some unique part of the lake that people don’t usually go to.
You can find people—just like we find housekeepers and maintenance people to help with our properties—to help with these experiences. You can build a business out of it.
Market Your Experience Effectively
A lot of how you’re going to market your experience is the same way you market your short-term rental. You want it to stand out.
Coming back to the boat tour example: if there are a hundred boat tours and everyone has a picture of their boat, but you have a picture of a sloth that stays in the same location off the river in the jungle, you’re going to stand out.
Corzly manages short-term rental properties across 50+ cities. If you’d like to understand how your current setup compares to what’s working in your market today, we’re happy to take a look. Contact us here.