“We are completely stunned”

Abstract

The relationship between service providers and guests has changed due to online platforms like Airbnb, which allow for a more direct contact between them. Although most responses to guests’ reviews tend to be positive and even include relational work strategies (Bridges and Vásquez 2018; Hernández-López 2019), verbal aggression is also performed (Hopkinson 2018). This study aims to focus on explicit and implicit aggressive responses to negative reviews on Airbnb in English and Spanish, with special attention to corrective facework strategies to repair the hosts’ face loss (Guerrero et al. 2014; Maíz-Arévalo 2019). Thus, 200 responses to negative reviews were gathered and analysed qualitatively, considering the strategies intended to mitigate potential face threat and to revert the situation. It was found that most of the hosts’ responses in the Spanish dataset aimed at repairing their own face within the community, while their English counterparts acknowledged negative reviews and apologised more often.