Auto-Review Your Guests

After every reservation, you have 14 days to write a review of the guest. Vanio can do this for you automatically — set up a workflow once with your review template and star rating, and every Airbnb reservation gets a review submitted on your behalf the moment it's eligible.

Quick reference: Write a guest review, host review of guest, review the guest, leave guest a review, post-stay review, host writes review, recommend guest, star rating for guest, automatic guest reviews — set up under Workflows → Add Action → Host Review.

What's a "host review of the guest"?

Airbnb (and most channels) lets both sides leave a review after a stay. The guest reviews the host and the property; the host reviews the guest. Both reviews are blind for 14 days — neither side sees the other's review until both are submitted, or until the 14 days expire (whichever comes first).

Writing a review of every guest is good practice because:

• It helps other hosts decide whether to accept the guest in the future
• Guests who get reviewed are more likely to leave you a review back (boosting your visibility)
• It triggers the unblinding of the guest's review of you — so you see what they wrote sooner

The downside: writing a thoughtful review for every guest manually takes time. Vanio automates this.

Set it up once with a workflow

Workflows → New Workflow → Add Trigger → "Reservation completed" (fires after checkout)

Then Add Action → Host Review. The action panel shows:

Public Review (required)

The text Airbnb makes public, attributed to you, that other hosts will see when they look up this guest.

Use template variables to personalize for every guest:

{{guest.firstName}} was a wonderful guest at {{listing.title}}. They communicated clearly, followed the house rules, and left the property in great condition. I'd happily host them again.

Common variables: {{guest.firstName}}, {{guest.lastName}}, {{listing.title}}, {{reservation.checkIn}}, {{reservation.nights}}. The full list is in the variable picker (click the {{}} button next to the field).

Private Feedback (optional)

A private message that only the guest sees. Use it to give them coaching or thanks that doesn't belong in the public record. Optional — leave blank if you don't want to send anything privately.

Thanks again {{guest.firstName}} — really appreciate you locking up properly when you left.

Overall Rating

Pick a star rating from 1 to 5. Most automated reviews use 5 — if you wouldn't give every guest 5 stars, you probably shouldn't auto-review (or you should add a condition to the workflow that excludes problem stays).

Recommend Guest

Toggle on or off. "Recommend" means you'd happily host this guest again — Airbnb shows this to other hosts when they get a request from this person. Default to on for auto-review workflows; off for guests you'd rather not see again.

Save the workflow

Click save. From now on, every reservation that matches the trigger conditions gets a review submitted automatically the moment Airbnb makes it eligible.

Limitations

• Airbnb only. Other channels (Booking.com, VRBO) don't expose host-writes-guest-review APIs the same way. The action only fires for Airbnb reservations.
• One-way. This action SUBMITS a review. It doesn't pull what the guest wrote about you — that's a separate feed (see Reviews Management for the inbox side).
• 14-day window. Airbnb only accepts host reviews in the 14 days after checkout. Vanio respects this — if your trigger fires later, the review is skipped.
• No editing after submission. Once a review is submitted, you can't change it. Make sure your template + star rating are right before turning on the workflow.

How to use this responsibly

Auto-reviewing every guest 5 stars is fine when most of your stays are clean and uneventful. But there are cases where you should NOT auto-review:

• Guests with maintenance issues, complaints, or damage claims. Add a workflow condition like "exclude reservations flagged with damage" or "only run for reservations with no escalations" so problem stays don't get a glowing 5-star auto-review.
• First-time guests with no review history. Some hosts only auto-review guests who already have positive history (rating ≥ 4.5) and review first-timers manually so they can be more thoughtful.
• High-touch properties (luxury, large groups). Auto-review at scale doesn't fit boutique operations. Manual review is fine here — Vanio won't pressure you.

The point of the automation is to free you from the mundane case (90% of stays are great, 5-star, recommended) so you can spend your time on the 10% that need a real human touch.

Suggested workflow structure

A safe pattern most hosts use:

1. Trigger: Reservation completed
2. Condition: Reservation has no open escalations AND no damage claim
3. Condition: Stay length ≤ 14 nights (longer stays often warrant a manual touch)
4. Action: Host Review
   • Public Review: thoughtful template with guest name + property
   • Overall Rating: 5
   • Recommend: on
5. Wait 6 hours (gives any post-checkout issues time to surface)
6. Action: Send a "thank you" message via the unified inbox encouraging them to leave their own review

This way, the auto-review only fires for genuinely uneventful stays, and you still get reviews going out at scale.

Where the action lives in the codebase

If you're curious or building custom workflows: this action is the host_review action type in the Workflows engine. It fires through the Vanio Agent's handler layer and submits via the Airbnb reviews API. The result (success, failure, skipped) is logged in the workflow run history under that reservation's timeline.

Common scenarios

"I want to auto-review only my repeat guests." Trigger: Reservation completed → Condition: Guest has previous reservations with us → Action: Host Review (5 stars, recommend on).

"I want different review templates for different property types." Create one workflow per property group. Use Listing Groups (Settings → Listing Groups) to organize. The workflow trigger filter lets you pick which group it applies to.

"My templates use the guest's name — what if it's missing?" Vanio falls back gracefully. {{guest.firstName}} becomes "your guest" if the field is empty. Test by previewing the workflow before enabling.

"Can I auto-review on Booking.com too?" Not yet. Booking.com's API doesn't expose host-writes-guest-review submission the same way Airbnb does. The action will skip Booking.com reservations and log it.

"What if a guest I auto-reviewed turned out to be terrible — can I undo?" No. Airbnb doesn't allow editing or deleting reviews after submission. This is why the workflow conditions matter — exclude flagged stays before they get auto-reviewed.