The After-Checkout Message - Receive more reviews and more feedback

Are you tired of not getting reviews, or did you have a guest who said everything was excellent and rated you a 4/5? Here is how to fix this.

The After Checkout message is often an ignored communication, yet it is very important.

We send this message 6 hours after the check-out time.

Why 6 hours? Usually, within 6 hours, the cleaning team has had a chance to inspect the property, and you will be notified if there are any issues. Don’t send this message as is if the guest did not follow instructions or left the property a mess.

In this message, thank guests for staying at your property and stress the importance of receiving a 5/5 review. Let them know to send you private feedback on anything that broke, needs attention, or could be improved. Let them know you will be rating them a 5/5 and would love a 5/5 review.

That’s right, softly ask them for a 5/5 review.

Here is our exact after-checkout message and a deep dive:

Hi [$GUEST_FIRST_NAME$],

Thank you for choosing to stay at our place and for taking such great care of it! This is one of our favorite vacation spots as well—our home away from home.

As a small business, we’re dedicated to providing excellent service and creating a welcoming experience for our guests. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve, we’d love to hear your private feedback. Your input helps us continue to make our home even better for future stays.

We look forward to giving you a 5-star review as soon as possible and hope you’ll consider rating us 5 stars as well. We truly hope you enjoyed your stay and would love to host you again!

Thank you!!

Your Name
Your Email
——-

The [xxxx] are parameters from our workflow engine in Hostfully . If you are using native Airbnb or another property management system, your parameters will look different.

A couple of key components of this message:

• By mentioning that you will rate them 5/5, you are pushing them to also rate you. We are constantly reading various community posts that many guests do not rate. This will definitely increase the percentage of guests who write reviews.

  We have also had cases where we messed up, or the guest expectations did not match our property, and the guests point blank have told us we can’t give a 5/5, so we won't rate.

  If you do manage to get this feedback loop working well, your property will remain at the top with many 5/5 reviews.

• Do rate your guests 5/5 if you say you will. Many hosts don’t bother rating their guests, but doing so doesn’t take long. We do have another post coming up on rating your guests.

• Make sure your message signature includes your name, email and direct booking web site if you have one. If you have your direct booking site, guests that want to return will appreciate it. Repeat guests love saving the 10-13% guest fee that Airbnb charges by booking directly. Around 10-20% of our guests are now repeat guests….this percentage has grown yearly. The other item you can do is a discount coupon. Everyone loves coupons……more on this on a different blog.

• Take the private feedback seriously. You are not obliged to do any of it, but guests will often have great ideas that may not cost that much to implement.
  
  As an example, here is a small 1 bedroom suite that we completely gutted and remodeled. We thought we were perfect in our remodel, but in two years, here are the items we have done based on feedback. We keep a running list in Microsoft OneNote, but you can use your favorite online note-taking tool. Make sure it is easy to add as you may be in the supermarket line and get a feedback worth jotting down. Here are our improvements in 2 years based on guests feedback:

  • Under counter lights in the kitchen (less than $100 from Amazon)

  • A cheese grader to the kitchen

  • A light switch right by the door

  • A label to the fireplace thermostat so easy to see how to operate

  • A sign with the name of the place (to not be confused with the main house)

  • Ice trays

  • More scissors (do guests eat scissors?)

  • Installed Cabinet door knobs

  • Better grill utensils

  • Insulated toilet water line to stop sweating/leaking when sauna is used

  • Cut lawn with a better path to the firepit

• The last point on this message is if you do have a property that may not always be considered a 5/5, perhaps stress that anything any review less than a 5 is considered a failure. There are still many guests who do not bother to leave a review or think that a 4/5 is a good score. This is where we need to educate the guests and politely beg for a review.

Remember, this post-checkout message is just one piece of a formula for a great guest communication experience. And the guest communication experience is just one portion of the whole guest experience.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. Wondering if cohosting is right for your property? Let’s talk it through — reach us at info@AdventuresInAirbnbs.com