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 Negative review challenger 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.
Run the Negative review challenger agent manually
In addition to the scheduled run, you can trigger the agent manually at any time from the Agents hub.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the side navigation menu, select
Agents hub. - At the top, select the Communication tab.
- Click the Negative review challenger tile.
- Under "When it runs", click Run now.
Review the results and status of the run in the activity feed.
Review the activity feed
Follow the steps below to review your activity feed.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
- In the side navigation menu, select Agents hub.
- In the left submenu, select Agent activity.
- Click the relevant row with the agent's name to review the report details in the right-side panel.
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.
- 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.