Staying Calm in the Face of Negative Reviews
How to navigate & respond to negative guest reviews
June 2025
A negative review can be a major setback for holiday rental owners. This is a real stress test for your business, and the way you respond can be a make-or-break moment. Let’s take a look at how to respond to & deal with negative guest reviews, as well as how to stop bad reviews from ruining your rental business.
How to respond to negative reviews of your holiday rental
The worst thing has happened: a guest has left a poor review of your holiday apartment. Now the ball is in your court — what are you going to do? Take these steps to turn the situation around:
1. Stay calm
First and foremost, this is the most important thing. You might be tempted to write a response blasting the guest, but no matter how cathartic it would be, you must not do this. Some holiday rental owners have gone viral for their responses to bad reviews. Whenever this happens, there may be a few people cheering the owners on. However, the majority will cringe at the level of unprofessionalism.
2. Put yourself in their shoes
Read property owner reviews as rationally as you can. Your natural instinct when you receive a bad review is to think about how unfair it is, but is it really? Does the guest have a point? How would you feel if you decided to rent a holiday flat and had a similar experience?
It might help if you share it with a trusted friend who can provide an objective opinion. This will help you get a clearer idea of the guest’s thoughts and feelings when they rent holiday apartments.
3. Fact-check the review
It’s important for property owners to get the facts straight when looking at reviews. This is particularly crucial if you’ve taken a backseat when it comes to the day-to-day running of your holiday rental business. For example, if you’re not inspecting the property before each guest arrives, can you honestly say that you know your cleaner is doing a good job?
If the reviewer mentions a bad experience with another person —which could be your manager, your cleaner, a neighbour, or someone involved in one of your cross-selling promotions— get in touch with them. Remain calm and ask them for their side of the story without being accusatory. This will help you get a clearer picture of what actually happened.
Be sure to treat the guest with respect. You might not believe them right away, so ask them politely if they have photos or other evidence.
4. Remain focused on customer service
When someone leaves a bad review, they want to feel that their opinion is being heard. Someone writing a review for a holiday apartment should be treated with total respect.
In your reply to the negative review, the first thing you should do is acknowledge the guest’s concerns. Even if you don’t feel that you are to blame, swallow your pride and apologise. Think about how you can turn the situation around and make them happy again. If you were in the guest’s shoes, what would you want the owner to say?
5. Thank the guest
You might not want to thank someone who’s just blasted you on a holiday rental portal, but you always should. Begin your response with a professional line like, “Thank you for the feedback. I’m sorry your stay was not as enjoyable as we hoped.” Thanking your guests shows you value their feedback.
Remember, your reply to the guest is not just being read by one disgruntled customer. Instead, it’s being read by all your potential future guests, so always be polite.
If the guest mentions particular positives, single them out in your response. You might say something like, “Thank you for your comments about our decor.”
6. Mention what you did
In some situations, you may be expecting a bad review because you already know that the guest had a negative experience during your stay. In this case, your response should refer to whatever actions you took at the time.
For example, you might write something like this:
Thank you for the feedback. I’m deeply sorry that you found there were not enough towels for your group. As you’ll recall, I personally visited the property to provide you with extra towels. I hope this helped make up for the inconvenience.
Of course, for this to work, you need to have acted in the moment. Let this be a good lesson for you — when it comes to negative customers, a stitch in time really does work.
7. Describe the actions you will take
Your response should also mention anything you have done behind the scenes and how you will act going forward. For example, if a guest complains about cleanliness, say that you will spend more time reviewing your cleaning staff’s performance.
By the way, you should take this seriously. Don’t just write something to appease the reviewer. Instead, you really need to take action to ensure other guests are satisfied in the future.
8. Respond promptly
Finally, it’s really important that you don’t leave negative reviews to stand for too long without a reply. You should regularly check review portals for property owners or holiday rental websites to see what people are saying about your holiday rental. The faster you can reply, the better — just don’t do it in a rush if you’re already angry.
What not to do when you get a negative review on a holiday rental website
Here are some absolute no-nos. If someone leaves your holiday apartment a bad review, don’t be tempted to:
- Get drawn into an argument. Leave one response; if a guest replies again, let it stand.
- Be rude or dismissive. Remember, other potential guests are reading.
- Make a joke of it. Humour can be difficult to convey in text —and what’s more, for the guest, this is no laughing matter.
- Ask them to take the review down. They may share this request, which will leave you looking worse.
- Flood the site with positive reviews to drown out the negative voice. This is a very obvious tactic that other guests will see through. What’s more, many review portals have detection tools that will see these reviews getting deleted.
Finally, keep in mind that some bad reviews truly are unfair, but that other guests can see this, too. If someone is complaining about something beyond your control, like bad weather or the lack of a personal butler, just thank them for their feedback, apologise, and move on. You can rest assured that other people reading the review will probably be rolling their eyes at the reviewer’s unreasonable demands. All you can do is remain professional at all times.