How reviews work
Reviews are only worth reading if you know where they came from. Here is exactly how ours are produced, including the parts that are awkward to admit.
Only guests who paid to reach the host can review
A review can only be written by somebody who paid to unlock that listing's contact details. There is no way to review a place you have not unlocked, and no way for a host, a friend of a host, or a passer-by to leave one. One unlock means one review — nobody can write a second about the same place, however many times they stay.
Writing one is free, and nobody is paid for it
Reviews cost nothing. We do not pay for them, hosts cannot pay for them, and there is no discount, credit or reward for leaving one — a five-star review and a one-star review are worth exactly the same to everybody involved, which is nothing. The only money anywhere near a review is the unlock fee the guest already paid to contact the host, long before they wrote anything.
Hosts cannot see a review coming, or remove it afterwards
Reviews go live the moment they are written. There is no approval step and no queue. The host is emailed only after a review is already public, so there is no window in which they could react to something you cannot see yet. Hosts have no button to edit, hide or delete a review — not on their dashboard, not by asking us. They can report one for a person to read, and reporting changes nothing that is displayed. The author can correct their own review for 24 hours, after which it locks, and every earlier version is kept.
Hosts can ask — and they choose who to ask
A host can send a review link to any guest who unlocked their listing. That is ordinary and we allow it. It also means what you read here may lean positive, because a host is more likely to ask a guest who enjoyed themselves than one who complained. We cannot stop that, so we are telling you instead of pretending otherwise.
What we cannot tell you
We cannot tell you which reviews a host asked for. The review link is the same for everybody and works whether a host sent it or a guest found it on the listing, so any label claiming to separate the two would be guessing. We would rather say that once, here, than print a badge that quietly implies the unbadged reviews were unprompted.
What we can tell you is that every review below came from somebody who paid real money to contact that host, that none of them were paid for or rewarded, and that no host has ever been able to remove one.
If something is wrong
Removing a published review is a legal decision — a court order, or content that is unlawful in itself — and it needs a person, not a button. A host disliking a review is not a reason to remove it. If you believe a review breaks the law, report it from the listing and somebody will read it.