Non-transaction based review sites like Yelp, VRBO, etc., are plagued with fake reviews by owners, guests, and competitors. On sites like that, how do you know that those glowing reviews you just read weren't written by the owners, their staff, or their friends? You don't.
By tying our double-sided review system to actual transactions you can have almost complete confidence that the reviews you are reading are the result of someone staying with, or hosting, another member of our community.
We have reached out to the author of the article to articulate this, but rest assured, had he booked through Airbnb he would have been able to write the review he wanted.
In addition to that, he wouldn't have sent money blindly to someone. We would be holding it until after he checks in and reminding the owner via email of the booking to prevent exactly this kind of situation from happening. And in the rare occasions when it does, our 24/7 customer team would have stepped in and helped to find him a new place or issue a complete and fast refund.
People who do that sort of thing leave lots of tracks they don't realize they're leaving.
I'm not saying they haven't considered it, I'm saying they can't stop it. Making the claim that a transaction based review system is inherently trustworthy seems either naive or disingenuous.
I'll grant their review system is set up from the get-go to be the best of anyone out there.
The result is a side flooded by fake reviews costing a couple of bucks each to the Hotel manager. That's cheaper than Adwords :)
The author did not book the property through Airbnb. Had he done so, he would have learned what we do in these rare situations. His article missed a couple key points:
1) If a host cancels a reservation on a guest, a default review is generated stating that the host canceled X days before arrival. The guest can modify this auto-generated review if he wants to add color to it.
2) The host is penalized monetarily if he cancels on guests more than once per 90 days. The penalty is $100 if the cancellation is within one week of arrival, otherwise $50. Hosts that repeatedly cancel on guests may be removed from the site.
As a result of these policies, host cancellations are rare. Most occurrences are honest mistakes and not from repeat offenders.