Ten to fifteen years ago, complaints and negative reviews from guests were quite rare, and claims from guests for compensation were virtually unheard of. Unfortunately, both have skyrocketed in the last couple of years, and it is important for property owners to understand why.
The massive increase globally in guest complaints, negative reviews and claims for compensation is not caused by cleaners all suddenly doing a bad job, or properties all falling into disrepair overnight, or property owners going crazy. To find out what is actually happening, we have to look much further afield.
Firstly, we have to understand a bit about the online travel agents (Booking.com, VRBO, HomeAway, AirBnB, Stayz, Wotif and others) that dominate the short stay accommodation market, and the ways they compete against one another for bookings.
It is important to understand that these massive corporations don’t really care whether or not your property is listed on their sites. They know that if your property suddenly disappears, their customers will simply book another one of their properties – and they have hundreds of thousands of properties to choose from. They make money by booking and retaining return guests who are loyal to their brand, not by listing properties.
Holiday accommodation is a multi-billion dollar business, so the rivalry between these online travel agents (OTAs) to attract guests is fierce. They dream up all sorts of guest incentives such as loyalty discounts, free cancellations, booking credits etc to try and entice guests to book with them rather than the opposition, which is where the problem lies.
A couple of years ago, some of the OTAs started offering customers satisfaction guarantees. That is, if the guest was not happy with their ‘booking experience’, they simply had to fill in a few online boxes detailing their concerns and the OTAs would investigate compensating the guest from the funds they would normally transfer to the owner.
SURPRISE, SURPRISE – almost overnight thousands of previously happy guests were suddenly unhappy, were leaving negative reviews and were approaching OTAs for ‘compensation’.
OTAs then started routinely reimbursing guests from money held for the owners, with little or no effective right of reply. Unscrupulous guests initially exploited this system, but now it is quite common for lots of guests to go down this path. Many guests now see it as a normal part of the booking process. That is – pay your money, have your holiday and then claim some money back.
To put it in perspective, we now deal with claims for compensation from guests and threats of negative reviews every single day – which absorbs many hours of our time each week. While guests dream up all sorts of weird and wonderful things to complain about, the easiest and most common thing they complain about is cleaning. The reason is it is simple, guests can claim allergies or health issues that we cannot defend against, and at times, it is easy for some guests to fabricate.
If guests complain about departure cleaning issues, the cleaners will always go back and resolve the problems and not charge extra to do so. This has always been the case. Unfortunately, most guests actually complain about cleaning issues that should have been sorted out with spring cleans. Typically they will focus on drapes and blinds, behind the fridge, air vents, light fittings, mould on ceilings, dust behind televisions and washing machines, the back of cupboards, behind bed heads etc. These are all spring cleaning issues. I have written to owners numerous times in the past about the different types of cleans required, but you can easily CLICK HERE for a refresher.
An increasing number of guests now go searching for these things, and once they drag the washing machine out and find the lint and dust that typically accumulates underneath the machine, they will photograph it, claim to be allergic to dust, make a claim for compensation and be reimbursed by their OTAs.
As a result, we are spending many hours each week defending owners against claims brought against them by guests. Some of these claims are from guests who are simply scamming the system, while others are because the properties are not regularly spring cleaned. At the same time, cleaners who are now being asked to return to properties to carry out cleaning tasks associated with spring cleans have run out of patience and indicated they will start charging owners extra to do so.
The OTAs also track guest reviews, and will readily suspend or de-list properties where guests make successful claims for compensation.
While owners can come up with some great reasons and deflections as to why they have not conducted regular spring cleans in the past, the reality is, the guests don’t care! They want a spotlessly clean property, or they will leave you a negative review and seek compensation. If we can’t provide the OTA with evidence of regular and recent spring cleans, it is virtually impossible to mount a defence against the claim.
While some guests will always find something to complain about and it is impossible to guarantee negative reviews won’t happen (and we have seen some ridiculous and trivial complaints), providing a clean property will go a long way toward eliminating most problems.
So, in a nutshell, complaints, negative reviews and claims for compensation are increasing exponentially, and are the direct result of OTAs offering ‘unhappy’ guests compensation.
Most guest complaints reference cleaning issues that would have been avoided if spring cleans were done.
Owners can either conduct intensive spring cleans themselves (common), or pay cleaners to do them. Spring cleans can be expensive but there is a lot involved in a thorough and proper spring clean. Owners are far better off increasing their tariffs to pay for regular spring cleans, than skipping spring cleans. Guests care far more about the cleanliness of the property than the price.
Owners who don’t do spring cleans are at a very high risk of complaints, negative reviews, claims to OTAs for compensation, and possible/probable suspension or removal from OTA websites.
During the upcoming ‘schoolies week‘ (16 Nov – 22 Nov) we will be emailing all owners and asking about their plans for spring cleaning practices and intentions, scheduling everyone’s spring cleaning plans, coordinating the cleaners where required, and seeing how we can further assist owners with keeping their properties spick and span.