Guest Reviews

Guest reviews are collected in one place so your team can read them, reply, and decide which ones to feature on your public website. Most arrive automatically from the channels connected through your distribution provider. Reviews that can't come that way, such as VRBO reviews and Airbnb reviews for properties imported from your PMS, can be imported instead (see Reviews Imported From Airbnb and VRBO). This guide covers the reviews list, the approval and reply workflow, imported reviews, and the rules around Airbnb's double-blind review window.

The Reviews List

Open Reviews from the Operations section of the sidebar to see every review across your properties. The page is titled Guest Reviews.

The filter bar at the top narrows the list:

Control	What it does
All properties	Shows one property's reviews.
All channels	Shows one channel's reviews.
Any month	Shows the reviews received in one month.
Sort	Newest first, Oldest first, Highest score, Lowest score, or Deadline soonest.
Show archived	Includes archived reviews in the list.
All / Action needed / Done	The three tabs.

Each row shows:

Column	What it shows
Reviewer	The guest's display name.
Property	The property reviewed.
Channel	The channel's logo.
Score	The overall score.
Status	Not yet, Reply sent, Host review sent, Both done, or Imported.
Reply By	The deadline for responding, when the channel sets one.
Received	The date the review arrived.
Website	The eye toggle that publishes the review to your website (see Publishing Reviews to Your Website).

Click View on a row to open the review in a side panel with the full text, the category scores, and the reply tools.

A review is Action needed when nobody has responded to it yet: no reply has been sent and, for Airbnb reviews received through your channel manager, no host review has been submitted. The New Reviews tile on your dashboard opens this tab. Work it down to zero the way you would the inbox's Needs Reply folder.

Imported reviews never appear under Action needed. There's nothing to do for them in Argonautas, so they go straight to Done with the Imported status.

Replying to a Review

To reply, click View on the review, type your reply on the Reply to review tab, and click Send Reply. A thoughtful reply to both praise and criticism shows prospective guests that you're engaged. Once sent, your reply is stored with the review and can be displayed alongside it on your website.

For Airbnb reviews received through your channel manager, a second tab, Review guest, lets you submit your host review of the guest: a public review, optional private feedback, star ratings for Cleanliness, Communication, and Respect for house rules, and whether you'd recommend the guest. Click Send host review to submit it.

When the response window has closed, the panel shows "The response window for this review has closed." in place of the reply box.

You can only reply from Argonautas to reviews that came through your channel manager. An imported review shows an Imported review panel in place of the reply box: "This review came from the OTA and can't be answered here. Reply directly on the OTA listing." See the next section for why.

Reviews Imported From Airbnb and VRBO

Some reviews can't reach Argonautas through the channel manager, so they're brought in another way. Reviews brought in this way are marked Imported.

Why Imported Reviews Can't Be Answered Here

Argonautas can only post a reply through the same connection that delivered the review. Imported reviews arrive by a one-way route, either a forwarded email or an import, with no connection back to the OTA. To reply, or to review the guest, go to the listing on VRBO or Airbnb. The Review guest tab isn't offered for imported reviews either.

You can still publish an imported review to your website like any other review (see below).

VRBO Reviews From Forwarded Emails

VRBO notifies you of a new guest review by email. Forward those notification emails to Argonautas and each review is added to your Reviews list automatically:

1. Get your forwarding address. Your company's VRBO forwarding address is set up by Argonautas support. Contact support if you don't have one yet.
2. Forward the review notifications. Forward VRBO's "reviewed their stay" notification emails to that address as attachments. A single forward can carry several notifications, and each one becomes its own review. If you use an automatic forwarding rule, set it up with support so the notifications arrive intact.
3. Check the Reviews list. Each review is matched to its booking using the VRBO reservation code, or to the property using the VRBO listing ID when no booking matches. It shows the guest's name, star rating, and review text, and a New Review from Vrbo alert is created.

Forwarding the same notification twice doesn't create a duplicate. VRBO's "Review your recent guest" reminders are ignored, and so is anything else that isn't a guest review. A notification without a reservation code isn't added. An alert is raised so someone can look at it.

Airbnb Reviews for Properties Not on the Channel Manager

Airbnb doesn't share review text with property-management systems. That means Airbnb reviews for properties that aren't connected through the channel manager, such as properties imported from Beds24 or Hostfully, can't arrive the usual way. For these, Argonautas support imports the reviews using each property's Airbnb listing ID:

• Hostfully-imported properties: the Airbnb listing ID is picked up from Hostfully automatically. There's nothing to set up.
• Other properties: give support the Airbnb listing ID. It's the number in the listing's web address (airbnb.com/rooms/<listing ID>).

Importing the same reviews again doesn't create duplicates, and it never changes whether you've published or unpublished a review. Imported Airbnb reviews arrive unpublished unless you ask support to publish them as part of the import. That can be useful when you're bringing in a backlog of past reviews.

Publishing Reviews to Your Website

Reviews can feed a public reviews section on your guest-facing website, but you decide which ones appear. Each review row has an eye toggle in the Website column:

• A teal eye means the review is published to your website. Click it to unpublish.
• A grey crossed-out eye means the review is not published. Click it to publish.

New reviews start unpublished. Every review that comes in must be explicitly published before it can appear on your website. Nothing goes public automatically, which gives you a chance to read each one first. The one exception is a batch of imported Airbnb reviews that you've asked support to publish during the import.

To archive a review, open it and click Archive review at the bottom of the panel. Restore from archive brings it back. Archiving only tidies your list. It does not remove the review from your website. A review that is published stays visible publicly until you unpublish it.

What Your Website Shows

When a review is published, the public website feed includes the guest's display name, the overall rating, the review text, your reply, the per-category scores (cleanliness, location, check-in, accuracy, communication, value), the source channel, and the stay date.

Airbnb's Double-Blind Window

Airbnb hides each side's review until both the guest and the host have submitted, or until the review window closes. While a review is inside this double-blind window, Argonautas marks it as hidden and protects the process:

• The review is excluded from your website. It can't appear publicly while hidden.
• You can't publish a hidden review (the system will stop you).
• You can't reply to a hidden review until the window closes.
• You can't submit your host review during the window from here.
• If a review you already published later becomes hidden, it is automatically unpublished so it doesn't resurface publicly without your re-approval once the window reopens.

This is expected behavior, not an error. If you see "Cannot reply to a hidden (double-blind) review" or "Cannot publish a hidden (double-blind) review," wait until Airbnb's window closes. The review then becomes available to reply to and publish.

Common Questions

Why can't I reply to or publish a particular Airbnb review? If it came through your channel manager, it's still inside Airbnb's double-blind window. Once both parties have reviewed (or the window expires), the review unlocks and you can reply and publish it. If the review is marked Imported, it can't be answered from Argonautas at all. Reply on Airbnb.

Why didn't a new five-star review show up on my website? New reviews start unpublished. Click the eye toggle in the review's Website column to publish it.

My dashboard's "New Reviews" count includes reviews I can't act on yet. Why? Reviews still inside Airbnb's double-blind window are counted as waiting on you, even though you can't reply to them until the window closes.

Why can't I reply to a VRBO review? VRBO reviews are imported from forwarded notification emails, and that route has no way back to VRBO. Reply on the VRBO listing itself. The review shows as Imported and never sits in Action needed.

A VRBO review I forwarded didn't show up. Make sure you forwarded the notification to your company's VRBO forwarding address, and that it was VRBO's "reviewed their stay" email, not a "Review your recent guest" reminder. If it still doesn't appear, check the Alerts page (under Distribution in the sidebar) for a message about it, or contact support.

How do I get Airbnb reviews for my imported properties? Contact support. For Hostfully-imported properties the Airbnb listing ID is already known. For others, tell support each property's Airbnb listing ID.

If I archive a review, does it disappear from my website? No. Archiving only tidies your list. To remove a review from the website, unpublish it with the eye toggle.

Related

• Dashboard Overview: the New Reviews tile and how it links here.
• Channel Integration: the channels that deliver guest reviews.
• Messaging Guide: communicating with guests during their stay.
• PMS Integrations: importing properties from Beds24 or Hostfully.