The Negative Review Challenger helps you maintain your property's reputation by automatically identifying negative reviews that may violate a booking channel's content policy. When a potential violation is found, the tool drafts a formal removal request for you to review and submit. Challenging unfair reviews is a key part of increasing your guest review rating/scores.
Understanding the agent
The Negative Review Challenger agent automatically scans guest reviews with a 1 to 3-star rating that you've received in the last 30 days. It checks the review content against the booking channel's policies to find grounds for removal. This process runs periodically, on a similar schedule to the tools that help you with Replying to guest reviews.
The tool looks for violations such as:
- Discriminatory language
- Threats
- Personal attacks
- Factually false claims
- Off-topic content
- Incentivized reviews
- Irrelevant complaints about OTA policies
If a violation is detected, a removal request is drafted. The tool does not challenge reviews simply because they are negative; there must be a genuine policy violation.
Note:
- This feature primarily supports Airbnb. Other channels like VRBO have different removal request processes.
- The final decision to remove a review is always made by the booking channel, and success is not guaranteed. For more information, see our guide on Contacting booking channels for support.
Review and submit a removal request
When the Negative Review Challenger drafts a removal request, it creates a task in your Activity feed that requires your approval. The agent will never submit a removal request without your approval.
- SignIn the side navigation menu, click [icon] Agents hub.
- Select the Negative Review Challenger thumbnail.
- Click Activate agent and confirm the action in the popup to enable the agent.
- In the Activity feed, find the entry with the status "Action needed" for the relevant review.
- Click the entry to see the full details, including the drafted removal request letter.
- Review the letter to ensure it's accurate.
- Do one of the following:
- To send the request to the booking channel, click Approve & Submit.
- To discard the draft, click Dismiss. You can still contact the channel manually to dispute the review.
If no policy violations are found
If the tool scans a negative review and doesn't find any grounds for a removal request, the corresponding item in the Activity feed will have a "Done" status with the note "No grounds for removal found".
Even if no violations are automatically detected, you can always contact the booking channel directly to dispute a review if you believe it is unfair for other reasons, such as a factual disagreement.