Guest Feedback and Testimonials

Haven gives you two ways to hear from guests: private feedback (never public) and testimonials (you choose what to show). This is not a marketplace review board — there is no public rating that can ding you, and you control what appears on your site. See Your property, your rules.

Private Feedback vs Testimonials

Private Feedback

• Always collected when a guest leaves feedback after their stay
• Never published — only you see it
• Helps you improve and address concerns
• Appears in the property editor's Private feedback card, under Space → Reviews & Testimonials

Testimonials

• Optional — guests can choose to leave one when submitting feedback
• You decide which testimonials appear on your property page
• No ratings or scores — just guest stories
• You can also add testimonials from other sites (Airbnb, Google, etc.)

Why This Matters

Haven is not a marketplace. There are no public ratings or reviews that can hurt your reputation. One unhappy guest cannot ruin your property. You choose only what you want shown on your direct booking site.

How It Works

1. Post-Stay Email

After checkout, guests who booked direct receive an email asking them to leave feedback. The link opens the review form over their stay, already signed in, so they never stop at a sign-in screen. Each invited trip member gets their own email and their own link. There they can:

• Share private feedback (required) — notes only you see
• Optionally leave a testimonial — with the choice to hide their name

The Google review button fills itself in. Once you connect Google reviews, this email also carries a Leave a Google review button under the feedback button. You do not paste a link: Haven points the button at the review page of the business you connected, for the listing the guest stayed at. Until a business is connected the button is simply not in the email.

To use the link somewhere else — a text message, a message through your PMS, a broadcast — type {google_review_link}. It fills in the same way, with no setup. If you defined your own {google_review_link} under Settings → Shortcodes, your value is used instead. See Shortcodes.

2. Priority Inbox

When a guest leaves feedback, it appears as a priority task on your host dashboard. You can:

• Read the private feedback
• See the testimonial (if they left one)
• Feature the testimonial — turn on display for your property page
• Mark as reviewed — clear it from your inbox

3. Edit Listing: Reviews & Testimonials

In Edit Listing → Space → Reviews & Testimonials you pick the public mode and then set each review:

Where (property site): Property editor → Space tab → Reviews & Testimonials → Import reviews / Add testimonial buttons at the top; Google reviews row (Connect) to import a Google Business listing and add new reviews daily; Show all reviews toggle; per-review Featured / In All / Hidden; Private feedback card below Where (collection site): Multi-unit site editor → Layout tab → Home → right panel → Page Content → Guest Stories section → Add testimonial, Google reviews row (Connect) to import the business’s Google reviews and add new ones daily, pick which reviews are Featured (or leave Auto mode), and the section settings

Property-level toggle — Show all reviews

Mode	Label in the editor	What guests see
Off (default)	Only showing featured reviews	Only reviews you mark Featured.
On	Showing all reviews	Featured reviews at the top; guests can browse the rest in All Reviews.

Per review — Featured, In All, or Hidden

• Featured — shown as a testimonial on the listing.
• In All — only when Show all reviews is on: visible inside the All Reviews view, not featured at the top.
• Hidden — never shown, even if Show all reviews is on. Use this to keep a review off the site while still showing everything else.

The star average above the list is the average of reviews that are not hidden — the same set guests see. Hide a band of ratings (every 4-star, a single source) and that number updates.

To hide a filtered set at once, narrow the list with the rating, source, status, or search filters, then Hide all. You can unhide any review later.

You can also:

• Toggle name visibility — for guest-submitted testimonials where the guest allowed their name, you can hide it if you prefer
• Add manual testimonials — paste testimonials from Airbnb, Google, or other sites
• Connect Google reviews — paste the link to your business on Google and Haven imports its reviews, then adds new ones every day (see Connecting Google Reviews)
• View private feedback — read-only list of all private feedback for this property

4. Property Page

Featured testimonials appear below the Amenities section on your property page. A "Testimonials" tab in the header lets visitors scroll to that section.

The public band that displays them is titled Guest Stories — but on a property site you never edit its content from the Layout tab. Everything the band shows comes from Space → Reviews & Testimonials; the "Guest stories" row under Layout → Home → Sections only aligns the text on a photo break that appears when no reviews are featured. Multi-unit sites are the one place the Guest Stories section is itself the editor: in the multi-unit site editor, open Layout → Home → Page Content → Guest Stories to add group testimonials and choose which member-listing reviews are featured on the landing page.

5. Reels and social posts

Any review that is not Hidden can be made into a short video for social media. In Marketing → Creative, Feature a review lets you pick one by guest, stars, date or source, or has Haven choose one you have not posted yet, and builds a one-to-three-scene reel in the guest's own words. A review does not need to be Featured on your site to be used, and a hidden name stays hidden in the reel. See Feature a review.

Name Visibility

• Guest chose to hide name — You cannot override this. The testimonial will show as "A guest."
• Guest allowed name — You can toggle whether to show their name on the property page.
• Host-added testimonials — You control name visibility and display name freely.

Guest Entry Points

Guests can leave feedback from:

• The post-stay email link
• The text that goes with it, if you switched on the text step for the post-stay email (it links to the same form)
• The How was your stay? card on your guidebook's home screen, for 30 days after checkout
• The "Leave Feedback" button on past reservation details
• The "Leave Feedback" button on past reservation rows in their trips list

Airbnb, Vrbo and PMS guests. Haven sends these guests no post-stay email, but when you have opted their stay into Haven's guest experience (guest verification, Screen & Protect, or sending them your guidebook), the guidebook remembers them. When they open it after checkout, from the link you sent or on the same phone, they see the How was your stay? card and can leave private feedback and a testimonial like any direct guest. Trip members they invited from the guidebook can too.

Importing Reviews from a PMS

If you use a PMS like Hospitable, you can import reviews from Airbnb and other platforms to feature as testimonials on your Haven property page. When the integration is connected, reviews received through your PMS are available to select and display. You still have full control over which reviews appear. See PMS Integrations Overview for setup details.

Connecting Google Reviews

If your business has a Google Business listing, Haven can bring its reviews onto your site and keep adding new ones on its own.

1. Open Edit Listing → Space → Reviews & Testimonials and find the Google business row. On a multi-unit site, it is in the Guest Stories section instead.
2. Click Connect and paste the link to your business on Google. On Google Maps, open your business, choose Share, and copy the link. A "leave us a review" link works too, and so does typing the business name and town.
3. Haven shows the business it found, with its address and review count. Click Import reviews on the right one.

Every written review is imported word for word, with the reviewer's name, star rating, and date. Ratings left without any text are skipped. A business with a few hundred reviews takes about half a minute; the newest 500 are imported.

After that, Haven checks Google once a day and adds reviews posted since the last check. You can also click Sync now at any time, or turn Add new daily off to stop the daily check without disconnecting.

Imported reviews behave like every other review here:

• On a listing, Haven features a few standouts when the reviews first arrive, and the rest are In All. On a multi-unit site, up to four recent five-star reviews are featured to start.
• Reviews added by a later daily check arrive as In All, never Featured, so a new review cannot rearrange the ones you chose to feature.
• Set any review to Featured, In All, or Hidden. A review you hide or delete does not come back on the next check.
• A review already on the listing with the same text (from an earlier import, for example) is skipped rather than added twice.

One Google listing can be connected to several of your listings and to your multi-unit site. To stop, click the disconnect icon beside the business. Reviews already imported stay until you remove them.

Three places to connect, one result

Each listing can have its own Google business, and your account has a default that covers every listing without one. If all your rentals share one Google Maps listing, set the default once. If each rental has its own Google Maps listing, give each listing its own. Use whichever of these places you are already in; they all set the same thing:

• Account settings (Settings → Account & Profile → Account → Google business) sets the default for your whole account. Every listing without its own business asks for a Google review in its post-stay email, the empty Google Business Profile link under SEO is filled in on each of your sites, and its reviews start importing on your multi-unit sites (and on your listing, if you have just one). With more than one listing, the card also lists By listing every listing, the business it uses, and where that comes from (Own, From a multi-unit site, or Default). Click Set its own on a listing to give it its own Google business there, or the arrow to open that listing's Reviews & Testimonials.
• SEO settings. Pasting your Google Business Profile link under Linked profiles or Google & Apple Maps connects that business to that site the same way: its reviews are imported within a minute or two and guests are asked for a Google review. This works for a share link, a Google Maps link to your business, or a "leave us a review" link.
• Reviews & Testimonials, as described above. Connecting here also fills the site's Google Business Profile link under SEO if it was empty. A listing with no business of its own shows the one its guests are asked to review anyway, and where it comes from. Click Use a different one to give the listing its own, or Import its reviews to bring your default business's reviews onto the listing.

A listing or site that has a different business of its own keeps using its own. A link you typed under SEO is never replaced.

Asking guests for a Google review

Connecting a business also turns on Ask guests for a review beside it. With that on, the post-stay email adds a Leave a Google review button that opens Google's review form for your business. There is no link to copy or paste.

• Which business a guest is sent to: the one connected on the listing they stayed at. If that listing has none, the one connected on a multi-unit site the listing belongs to. If neither has one, the business set for your account under Settings → Account & Profile → Account → Google business. If you have connected only one business anywhere, every listing uses it.
• Two different businesses, none set for the account, and a listing tied to neither: that listing's email has no Google button, because Haven will not guess which business the guest should review.
• To stop asking, turn Ask guests for a review off beside the business, in Account settings or on any listing or site. It is one switch per business, so turning it off in one place turns it off everywhere that business is connected. The import keeps running.
• The button's words are yours. Open the email under Communication → Message automations, click the Google review button, and edit its label.
• Every guest gets the same email. Haven does not show the button only to guests who left good feedback.

Haven can connect to Google reviews today. For reviews on other sites, use Import reviews below.

Importing Reviews Yourself

When your PMS will not share reviews (OwnerRez only does so with its paid website add-on), or your reviews live somewhere Haven has no connector for, click Import reviews in the Reviews & Testimonials section (Space tab). It reads an export file (an OwnerRez CSV or Excel export is read instantly, column by column), screenshots of a reviews page, pasted text, or a public listing link, shows you what it found, and adds only what you keep. Reviews are imported word for word and re-importing the same file adds nothing. See Import Reviews.

Vrbo reviews and OwnerRez: Vrbo does not send guest reviews to OwnerRez, so hosts connected through OwnerRez never receive their Vrbo reviews in Haven, with or without the add-on. Screenshot the reviews on Vrbo, or copy the page of reviews as text, and import them here until Vrbo and OwnerRez close that gap.

Summary

• Private feedback = For your eyes only. Use it to improve.
• Testimonials = For your property page. Feature a few, show all, or show all and hide select reviews.
• No marketplace ratings = A guest cannot force a public score onto your Haven site.
• One unhappy guest = Cannot affect your public property. Their private feedback stays private unless you choose to feature a testimonial.

Related Articles

• Your property, your rules
• PMS Integrations Overview
• Import Reviews
• Shortcodes: Personalize Any Guest Text