How to Leave a Property Review on HomeAway

Have you stayed at a HomeAway rental? Come back from vacation and want to share your opinion of the property or the experience? This tutorial will show you how to leave a property review on HomeAway and how to make it a good one!

We don’t do or buy much now without reading reviews. If we haven’t tried it before, the first thing we tend to do is look at the review section of the page or search for reviews. Reviews give us the confidence that the description isn’t just marketing speak and that the product or service actually delivers on its promises.

Called social proof, reviews are incredibly powerful in helping us make buying decisions. That’s why most eCommerce sites use them, why TripAdvisor and other websites are so popular and why we rarely make a buying decision about something new without checking reviews first.

We all know about filtering the pointless reviews from the good ones and using them as part of the decision making process and not the entirely of it, but do you know how to write one? I’ll cover that in a minute but first let’s answer the headline question, how to leave a property review on HomeAway.

Leave a property review on HomeAway

HomeAway manages just about everything via email. When you’re ready to check out, or a couple of days after, you will receive an email with a hyperlink that takes you to the HomeAway review site. Follow that link to leave your review. The link will look something like; https://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/reviews/write/pXXXXXXX. Where you see XXXXXXX, you will see the listing number of the specific property you stayed at.

• On the review page, first select whether you enjoyed your stay or not by selecting Yes or No.
• Then rate your experience using the star rating with one being the lowest and five the highest.
• Then leave a written review in the box to add flavor to your review.

Reviews are moderated before being published so this is not the time to vent or use expletives to describe a negative experience. If you want your review to help others, you need to be constructive.

You can also leave HomeAway reviews in the app. Select My Trips, select the property you want to review and select Leave a Review.

Writing a constructive review

Writing a review to vent your anger and writing a constructive review to help others make their own buying decisions are two very different things. While there is room for both, it is the latter that provides real value and only the latter that will generally help people make a decision.

Here are some tips for writing constructive reviews.

Plan what you want to say

Nobody wants to read a poorly worded rant on your disappointment with your purchase. To be worthwhile, a review needs to state clearly what fell short of expectations, how it fell short, what you did and most importantly, what the vendor did or did not do to help.

You’re describing a situation, whether positive or negative and the more understandable and legible that description is and the more constructive you can make it, the more useful it will be.

List your likes and dislikes

This is the easiest way to leave a review. Compile a short list of four of five likes and dislikes of the product or service and list them. Add a short description to each for clarity. This is a very simple way to leave a structured review that can help others.

Be as fair as possible

Reviews are inherently personal as they describe your own experience with something. However, they should also be fair and tell the whole story, not just your side of it. We know when a review is biased and not telling the whole truth as it is obvious in the reading. Unless you want your review to be discounted, make it as impartial as you can.

Be descriptive

Saying ‘there was a smell’ is not much use in a review. Saying ‘there was a strong smell of damp in the bathroom’ is much more descriptive. Saying the ‘host was rude’ isn’t enough but saying ‘the host continually ignored our five phone calls and then when they did turn up they were insulting and used the F-word in front of my mother-in-law’ tells much more of the story.

The more descriptive you can be, the more useful your property review will be.

Be honest

Reviews are for helping others avoid the experience you had or to enjoy the experience you had. Make the review as honest and as factual as possible. If you contributed to the experience, say so. You won’t be judged for it but your review is given more power for that honesty.

Reviews are a powerful motivator when making buying decisions of all kinds. If you leave a review and want to make it genuinely helpful, you now know how. Whether it’s for HomeAway or something else, make your next review a good one!