Why Your Airbnb Reviews Matter More Than Your Photos

This is something we see repeatedly. Hosts refresh their photos, update their listings, and expect bookings to follow, only to find performance barely changes.

The reality is this: you do need good photos, because they are your shop window. But guests trust reviews far more, and so do booking platform algorithms. In most cases, reviews have a greater impact on whether a guest books your property and how confident they feel doing so.

This guide explains why reviews matter so much, how guests actually use them, and what hosts often misunderstand about the booking decision.

Photos get guests to click on your listing. Reviews are what make them book. While you need professional photos to attract your first guest, maintaining excellent reviews is the key to long-term success.

A property with average photos and strong reviews will almost always outperform a beautifully photographed listing with weak, inconsistent, or limited reviews. This often surprises hosts, but it shows up again and again in real booking behaviour.

Think about it: would you book a beautifully photographed property if its review score was noticeably lower than others you were comparing? Would you pay market rate for a below-average review rating? In most cases, the answer is no.

In an 18-month window, Pass the Keys improved their average Airbnb rating from 4.6 to 4.75, which they observed drove the net booking value from their best-performing listings by an average of 20%.

When guests search on Airbnb, they don’t behave like estate agents. They behave like consumers, making risk-based decisions.

Most guests will scroll quickly through search results, click into a handful of listings, and then focus almost immediately on review scores and recent feedback. In fact, many guests read negative reviews before positive ones, looking for patterns rather than perfection.

Photos help set expectations, but reviews reduce uncertainty. Guests are quietly asking themselves whether the place will be clean, whether it will match the description, how issues are handled, and whether they can trust the host.

Reviews answer these questions far more effectively than images ever can. This is usually the case in most industries, not just when you are booking a property.

Airbnb’s goal is simple: reduce guest complaints, cancellations, and refunds.

Listings with consistently high ratings, recent reviews, detailed guest feedback, and responsive hosts are statistically safer bookings. Because of this, Airbnb tends to reward strong review performance with better search visibility, higher rankings among similar listings, and stronger trust signals for new guests. We have seen this time and time again in our own portfolio; it's the strongest driver to being able to demand higher nightly rates and get better occupancy rates. When we focused on this, the main performance metric we quickly saw a stark comparison in like-for-like properties, simply down to the review scores. Equally, we saw a massive improvement in underperforming properties simply by addressing and increasing the property review score.

Good photos might get you seen. Good reviews keep you visible.

Guests rarely expect perfection. What they look for instead is reassurance.

They scan reviews for signals around cleanliness, whether the description was accurate, how communication felt, and how any problems were handled. Quietness, comfort, and the overall ease of the stay often matter more than small cosmetic details.

One or two negative reviews won’t hurt you if they’re handled well. In fact, a calm and professional response often builds more trust than a flawless five-star record, which some guests view with suspicion.

We have seen many hosts unintentionally damage their own performance in a few predictable ways over the years.

One of the most common mistakes is over-focusing on photos. Once photos are “good enough”, returns diminish quickly. Reviews, on the other hand, continue to compound value over time.

Another issue we see far too often is ignoring review patterns. Repeated mentions of noise, cleanliness, or confusion at check-in are major conversion killers, even when the overall rating remains high. Guests want to trust not just the property, but the person or company managing it. When the same problems appear again and again, that trust starts to erode.

Over time, this usually leads to review quality slipping. Slow responses, inconsistent cleaning, or unresolved issues tend to show up in reviews long before bookings decline. In most cases, as review scores drop, lower occupancy follows. For anyone managing a property on the short let/holiday let market, this is something you need to be reviewing constantly.

Finally, one of the biggest red flags for guests is not responding to reviews at all. Silence looks like indifference. Thoughtful responses signal accountability and professionalism. This is hospitality, and mistakes will happen. What matters is how the host or property manager handles them.

There are always exceptions. In very high-demand areas with limited competition, performance is partly influenced by the surrounding stock. Even then, reviews still shape expectations and booking confidence.

High-performing listings don’t rely on luck. They’re built around systems. Especially at scale!

Professional hosting teams typically standardise cleaning and inspections, communicate proactively with guests, resolve issues before checkout, follow up correctly for reviews, and respond to all feedback professionally.

This consistency creates review momentum, something many self-managed hosts struggle to maintain over time. Trying to sustain this level of service at scale without the right infrastructure and operating procedures is difficult, which is why many property management companies struggle to consistently maintain review scores above 4.6.

This doesn’t mean photos aren’t important. They are.

Photos help set expectations, attract the right guests, and prevent disappointment. But reviews confirm whether the experience actually matched those expectations. The other element is the listing description; if the description is not aligned with reality, this will automatically lead to a bad review. Be honest in your listing descriptions; if it's not family-friendly, make that clear, if you do not have a TV, say it. Then make sure your photos match your descriptions.

Once photos and listing descriptions are clear, accurate, and professional, reviews become the main performance driver.

Reviews become especially critical if you’re in a competitive area, your pricing sits in the mid-range, you’re trying to increase occupancy, or you want to charge more without reducing demand. They also matter when comparing self-management with professional hosting.

At this stage, improvements almost always come from operations, not aesthetics.

Guests don’t book the best-looking property.

They book the one they feel most comfortable trusting, especially when they’ve never stayed there before.

If your bookings aren’t where you want them to be, look beyond the photos. Your reviews are already telling you what’s working and what isn’t.

Want to know whether reviews are holding your listing back?
We can review your listing and guest feedback to highlight practical improvements that actually move bookings.

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