Building and Improving the Superhost Program

[Airbnb]

As our global host community grows and becomes increasingly diverse, Airbnb’s programmes and policies need to grow and adapt as well – both to ensure the success of people from all over the world, and to show our appreciation for hosts’ hard work and amazing hospitality. That’s why we’re updating the Superhost programme to make it more fair, inclusive, and valuable to hosts everywhere.

Review rates

Great reviews are essential to earning Superhost status. They also help create a community where trust and transparency is shared between guests and hosts. But, hosts can’t control whether or not their guests choose to leave a review. After examining global data and speaking with Superhosts in a number of countries, we discovered that review rates aren’t consistent worldwide – some travellers always leave reviews, while others rarely do. This discrepancy can put some hosts at a disadvantage when it comes to consideration for Superhost status. In order to make the evaluation process more fair for everyone in our global community, we’ll no longer require that hosts have at least a 50% review rate in order to become Superhosts (or retain their existing status).

Cancellation policy

As part of our effort to make sure Airbnb programmes are built to meet the needs of all hosts, we’re also updating our cancellation requirement. Previously, we required that Superhosts have zero cancellations, but for hosts with an extremely high volume of bookings across multiple listings, that standard is impractical. To make the programme more fair for high-volume hosts, we’re now allowing one cancellation per 100 trips booked over the past year, which means a cancellation rate of less than 1% across all of your listings. It’s important to note that we still take cancellation as seriously as ever. Over the past five years, the Superhost community has worked hard to earn the trust of their guests and we will continue to reward that trust by recognising the most reliable hosts with Superhost status.

Both the changes to our cancellation and review requirements will take effect on the 1 July quarterly Superhost assessment. We’ll also be updating hosting dashboards at this time to reflect this new criteria.

Stay tuned 

We’re committed to continually improving the Superhost programme so that it works for the entire host community. That includes using clear, fair qualification criteria and making it valuable for every Superhost. From the overall design of the programme to how it rewards the community, we’re looking at different ways to not only make your hosting experience more positive, but also help you be more successful. So, please stay tuned, there’s a lot of exciting news to come.

[Emilia42]

@Airbnb  And next you'll tackle those one off retaliatory reviews, yes? 

[Mark116]

LOL, still nothing on reviews. 

The 1/100 cancellation helps airbnb's new category of hotel/resort/corporate listings, not the people with one or two listings.

I would much prefer to have kept the old no cancellation policy and gotten the company to omit reviews when there is a disagreement over a claim, when the guest has never entered the property, and to give hosts a 1/100 option to cancel an outlier review.

[Ann489]

@Airbnb    I'm with Mark.  The 1/100 cancellation policy does little for us "small-fry" hosts.   It seems that Airbnb is catering more and more to those high-volume, multiple property entities these days and has forgotten those who made Airbnb what it is.  :-P

[Alice595]

@Airbnb @Ann489 @Mark116 @Emilia42 

For those large business and corp listings, do they really care about Superhost status? I don't see a quantified numbers of listing or bookings which can be considered as extreme high. In addition, for those corp and business listings, there are two or three rooms available for the same listing. Do they really encounter the schedule planning issue?

Airbnb's move is useless.

[Branka & Silvia1]

Ok, these are 2 steps in the right direction... and now just 10-20 more to go  :)

[Susie111]

@Branka & Silvia1  Yep :-D

[Lizzie]

Thanks @Branka & Silvia1 , it's great you like these changes. Yep, there are a few more things on the wishlist, 2 down though! We are making progress. Hehe! :)

[Thomas1033]

How about a “super guest” title for exceptional guests who don’t cancel their reservations, have good communication, follow house rules and don’t arrive with more guests than registered and paid for.

[David3267]

don't think I've ever had too many of those!

[Elizabeth944]

It makes one wonder if this change re change of requirement for 50% reviews came about after the “technical glitch” that occurred a couple of weeks ago where a lot of Superhosts were notified that they may lose their status because they were only achieving 18 % ( or whatever number) review rate vs 50% that was expected. At the time I wrote to ABnB and complained but what really started to tick me off after was why we were responsible for ensuring guests review us. Shouldn’t ABnB have the responsibility for that. After all, they have the ability to ensure guest responses by imposing sanctions for non compliance. We can request and cajole but have absolutely no power and, in fact, we could jeopardize a good review if a guest feels like they are being nagged!

[Lizzie]

Hey @Elizabeth944,

Great to meet you and thanks for your comments.

The point you raised here about having a lack of control over the number of reviews your guests write for you, was a reoccurring theme here in the CC and I believe through other feedback channels as well. This is why the Superhost Team decided to review this.

Hopefully, now that this is no longer part of the Superhost criteria this is helpful to you and other hosts.  :) 

[Elizabeth944]

Hey Lizzie

I must admit until the “glitch” I didn’t think about ( or realize) that I had a target to reach for reviews. We have had around 8 people who didn’t leave one despite our reminders to them. It hadn’t occurred to me until the glitch about how crazy it was that we were being held responsible to have the guests review us when it was more logical that you folks do that. I am glad this has now been changed because I really hate nagging guests after their stay.

Thank you for your clarification.

[Nutth]

I like change but I think the host should help the community by review their previous guest. For a Review rates, it should request that Superhost have to be the one who writes a review 50% ( or more) of the guest they host. 

[Lizzie]

Aw interesting idea @Nutth, so you would like to see a new Superhost criteria for hosts to write reviews for their guests. 

Do you find that a lot of hosts don't leave reviews for their guests? 

Thanks for this.