You can't move Airbnb reviews to your own booking site — Airbnb doesn't offer an export, transfer or copy feature, and its terms don't allow scraping review content in bulk. What you can do is build a permission-based workflow that captures the same trust, guest by guest, and republishes it where it actually helps you: on the site where people book direct.
TL;DR
- You cannot move Airbnb reviews to your own website — there's no export tool and no API for it in 2026.
- The workaround: ask each guest in writing for permission to quote their Airbnb review elsewhere.
- Set up a review request for every direct booking so your own site builds its own review history going forward.
- GDPR means you need explicit consent before publishing a guest's name or words off Airbnb.
- Mix permission-cleared Airbnb quotes with fresh direct reviews so a new site doesn't look empty.
Why this matters
A guest who's never stayed with you before decides in seconds whether your direct-booking page feels safe to book. Reviews are the shortcut they use — no reviews, or three vague ones, and they bounce back to Airbnb where the rating is already sitting there in black and white.
If you've hosted for a few years on Airbnb, you likely have real feedback that would do that job for you — it's just trapped on someone else's platform. Sos Stays lists self-catering places across the Boyne Valley, Louth, Meath and the Mourne and Wexford coasts, and the same problem shows up for every landlord moving toward direct bookings: strong Airbnb history, thin direct-site proof.
Before you start
- Access to your Airbnb host inbox and message history — you'll need it to reach past guests directly.
- A place on your own site to actually show reviews — a dedicated reviews section per listing works better than one general testimonials page.
- The gotcha that trips people up: Airbnb's terms prohibit scraping or bulk-copying review content. Copy-pasting a full page of reviews without asking is the fastest way to get a takedown request or a guest complaint. The only route that holds up is asking each guest, one at a time, for permission.
Audit your Airbnb reviews for reuse
- Open your Airbnb host dashboard and go to Reviews.
- Sort by rating and pull out the ones with real detail in them — not "great stay!" but the ones that mention the woodburner, the walk to the beach, or how you sorted a late check-in.
- Note the guest's first name and the month of their stay beside each one you want to reuse.
Expected result: a shortlist of maybe 5 to 15 reviews worth chasing permission for — not your entire Airbnb history, just the ones with something real in them.
Get guest permission to republish
- Message each shortlisted guest through Airbnb, or by email if you've kept in touch, and ask plainly: can we quote your review, with your first name, on our own booking site?
- Keep the message short. Most guests who enjoyed the stay reply within a day or two.
- Save the reply itself as your consent record. Under GDPR in 2026, you need to be able to show you asked and they agreed — not just that you assumed it was fine because the review was public on Airbnb.
Expected result: a folder of guest quotes, each with a clear, written yes attached to it.
Set up review capture on your direct site
- Add a short review request to your post-stay message — sent 1 to 2 days after checkout, while the stay is still fresh in their head.
- Point it somewhere specific: a simple form, a review widget on the listing page, or even a reply-to-this-email prompt if you're keeping things low-tech.
- Publish reviews as they land rather than saving them up for a once-a-year batch — a page that updates looks lived-in.
Expected result: every direct booking adds one first-party review to your own site, with no permission chase needed because you asked as part of the stay.
Publish and display reviews on your own booking site
- Give each listing its own reviews section rather than one shared testimonials page — a guest booking a specific cottage in Meath wants to know what stayed there was actually like, not a general impression.
- Show the guest's first name and month of stay. Only use the exact wording of an Airbnb review if that guest gave you explicit permission for the specific text, not just a general "sure, go ahead."
- Blend the old (permission-cleared Airbnb quotes) with the new (direct guest submissions) so the page doesn't read thin in its first year.
Expected result: a reviews section on your own site that looks current and real, not recycled wholesale from another platform.
Keep the workflow running for every new guest
Do the same thing whenever a new Airbnb review comes in, rather than treating this as a one-off clean-up job. Add the guest to your permission-request list within a week of the review posting — a request sent three months later gets ignored far more often than one sent while the trip is still recent. This is also the point where the review workflow starts overlapping with wider guest communication for landlords running more than one listing, which is where a managed short-let setup earns its keep rather than each property owner chasing this separately.
Troubleshooting
- Guest doesn't reply to your permission request. Send one follow-up after a week, then let it go. Never publish a quote without a yes on record.
- An Airbnb review disappears. Airbnb can and does remove reviews that break its content policy, so don't treat any single review as permanent — get consent and save your own copy once you have it.
- A guest later asks you to take their review down. Under GDPR this is their right. Remove it within days and don't argue the point.
- Your direct site launched with zero reviews. Be upfront about it rather than padding the page — a short, honest line about the site being new reads better than three vague testimonials.
- Reviews you're collecting are thin and generic. Change the question. "What would you tell a friend booking this place?" gets better answers than "leave us a review."
Thinking about managing this yourself?
Sos Stays runs commission-based short-let management for landlords across Louth, Meath and the Mourne coast.
One last thing
The guests most likely to say yes to a permission request aren't your best Airbnb reviewers — they're your repeat guests. Someone who's already stayed with you twice trusts the relationship enough to let you quote them without a second thought, and they're also the most likely to book direct next time instead of going back through Airbnb. Start your permission list there before working through the wider shortlist.