Pretty much what it says in the title. The next round of Superhost evaluation covers April 1 2020 - March 31 2021. Due to government mandated COVID shutdowns and travel restrictions, over this period I received just 1 booking in June, 1 booking in July, before things came pretty much back online in mid December. In mid-December I hosted a family, who broke a few house rules (invited multiple additional guests, parked cars on lawns instead of carport). I noticed these issues when driving past on my way to the shops. Subsequently I contacted the guests to ask if he could keep the number of guests to the booked number, and move his cars off the lawns (sloping property with lots of water soak towards the bottom lawns, creating a strong risk of getting bogged and damaging the lawns). The guest agreed and apologised for the inconvenience. Time comes for a review and he states the cottage is nice and in a great location, but "Host sits in his white ute across the roads and monitored us, making us uncomfortable" - and gives an overall rating of 2 stars. I responded to the review of course, pointing out that I don't own a white ute, though the neighbour who lives across the road from us does, and though he may have sat in his ute at some stage, it certainly wasn't anything to do with me, or the guests. I contacted support, who rather predictably stated that the review didn't break any "standards", and that they won't remove reviews due to truth or fairness issues. I mentioned that I have no issue with the review itself as I was able to respond and explain, but it was the star rating that I felt could have been removed as it was such an obvious outlier to all my other reviews (126 reviews, overall rating 4.95) - but again, no chance.
As a result my overall rating for Superhost consideration now sits at 4.4 for the 4 quarters ending March 31, leaving me needing 15 consecutive 5 star reviews by the end of the period to retain Superhost status. I currently have 8 bookings for that period, but it would be almost impossible to fit an additional 7 in. Had I been able to accept bookings during the lockdown period (say, an additional 7 months, averaging maybe 5 bookings per month) I would have no issues averaging the 4.8 necessary - indeed for the previous review period, which included this 2 star review, I still hit the 4.8 mark, when the 3 months January 2020 - March 2020 was included. Obviously, only having the one property isn't helping me here of course, but not much I can do about that.
I know AirBnB have made concessions to certain criteria requirements when reviewing Superhost status, however we are now getting into periods where a single bad review can bring your average down so much (due to lack of reviews over the lockdown periods) that it is virtually impossible to meet the average score criteria requirement. I am wondering if any other hosts have experienced and issue like this, or if AirBnB will be addressing this issue at all for the upcoming review periods?
As an aside, the guest that gave me the 2 star review made a privacy complaint to support, resulting in my listing being summarily suspended with no notice. The listing has now been reinstated, after many days going backwards and forwards with support - but it wasn't easy!
