New Requirement of 4.7 or Get Delisted?

[Rebecca160]

Hey Fellow Hosts,

Have you taken the time to really consider the new minimum requirements to take effect July 1?  In particular,  the minimum 4.7 star average to host and 4.8 to remain a superhost, or face getting delisted.  There are a few other things, too, but the most concerning to me is the star ratings. This puts our livelihood in the slippery fingers of a harried happy guest, a calm happy guest , or an unhappy, vindicative guest.  Anyone can deliberately or inadvertantly click on a low star rating for a host, even when the host was outstanding. A low rating is almost impossible to remove, according to many testimonials on this forum.

I just clicked on London and discovered that the average star rating there is 4.5. Sorry London hosts, but looks like most of you are going to be leaving the plaform very soon...

My dashboardTarget description

I have not found any way to recover from actually being delisted. Is it a temporary suspension? Permanent?

Are you worried about the new targets? Outraged? Might want to think about it, before the bots get us.

As for me, I am pretty outraged.

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

In this scenario what I find beyond comprehension is how a company can plans on rolling out such a criteria when their sole exsistence in this field of business relies on having hosts. No hosts .. No guest.. No guest NO MORE MONEY FOR AIRBNB..

Does not take to be a rocket scientist to see the obvious... Being a superhost or not is one thing. But not been able to list you place is plain and simply put not a great business move.. 

And also without addressing the bigger question which is - how much power does a guest have over hosts? People have been using Airbnb for long enough to know that the guests are having a upper hand. Airbnb has become a synonym of vaccational/short term rental. So how is that all those big shots with even bigger degrees in marketing and strategies who are making these big decisions which impacts thousands of peoples livelihood are not able to see this. 

With all due respect and without being too critical I only want to understand the logic. We lost our SH status a month back because of 1 bad review. That very 1 review has brought both my properties's overall rating down to 4.7 and the property which got that said review is now 4.5 star. So if I am understanding this correctly, I would be removed from Airbnb because of 1 reveiw?? Meaning the other 40 plus reviews hold no meaning? 

[Rebecca160]

@Mathieu-And-Kunj0One of the reasons that I posted this was to get hosts to have a Voice and get Airbnb to change their policies before they lose their most precious resource: hosts.

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

I sure hope that it won't come to that Rebecca and that Airbnb will be able to see that before that happens. Something similar happened to expedia couple of years back by Booking.com. In today's technology driven world right after an idea is launched, someone else comes with a better and more improved version of it. Airbnb who revolutionalised the market of vaccational rental is not above it.. I sure hope that with the diversified mix of single property owner, multi property owners and property managers Airbnb can come up with a reasonable resolution.

[Rebecca181]

@Mathieu-And-Kunj0 @Rebecca160 The only thing that I can think of is that in the more populated areas / cities Airbnb would like only 5 star (Super) Hosts; Airbnb Plus; Beyond and Luxury listings; and professionally Property Managed listings. So perhaps this is why we have these new standards (4.7 for hosts / 4.8 for super hosts). I say this for the following reason:

A property manager that lists on Airbnb PM'd me this week (not sure how she found me) and during this conversation she spontaneously shared that she was told by an Airbnb Rep this week that she need not worry about being delisted unless she fell below 3.7. That really confused me. Could it be that property managers / multiple property hosts have a lower standard than us 'regular' hosts? I know they operate under several 'special' policies that encourage property managers to list (e.g., they are able to use a 'Super Strict 30', 'Super Strict 60' Cancellation policy) so maybe holding us 'traditional' hosts to a 4.7 standard is a way to reduce shared homes with on-site hosts that are mucking up their prime markets. 

I want to emphasize that I do not know the actual facts; just relaying what this one property manager shared with me this week. 

[Sarah977]

@Rebecca181  It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the Airbnb rep that the property manager talked to gave her incorrect information 🙂

I also find it interesting that they shut down Host Voice some time ago saying they were updating it, yet nothing else has appeared in its stead.

[Rebecca181]

@Sarah977 Indeed - Although this property manager was reportedly pretty adamant that the rep said 3.7 and this was a very seasoned, experienced rep. Oh yeah. Host Voice. Almost forgot about that.

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

@Sarah0 I sure hope you are correct and that this information is not correct and that CS rep was misinformed. Otherwise we all the traditional hosts who manage our own properties are at loss.. 

[Dustin25]

Your right host are left with the burden of the rating not the guest! If these guest keep acting like babies and expecting to world then we are all screwed. Don’t let them check in early even though they booked their flight and my airbnb thats a star. The city is paving the roads and the can not park out side thats a star. Did not know there was AC in the house even though it said it in the booking and keep replying that everything is fine when I check up, thats a stare because they can’t seem to read or ask a question. Mean wile I think hey everything is fine they are saying they are having a great time and thanking me. I recommend and give 5 stars to people then get their feed back for stuff that is in my listing or printed out in my listing that they are to lazy to read! I get this hit and wish I could tell other host they have unreal expectations and be ware. I know there are bad host but there are way to many very bad guests that should get a hotel!

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

@Rebecca181 Thanks for this information. If this is true then we might have some breathing ground left.. I for one will be calling Airbnb first thing tomorrow morning. But this seems like a big gap and previlege to have for professional hosting managers. I wonder why such leverage though? In fact if my understanding  is correct property managers don't really favour sharing their commission with booking portals and prefer direct clientele driven by their own websites.. So why give them this much scope if they are not even your sole "depended" clients? I mean if I put myself in guest shoes, for me it does not really matter if it is professionally managed or not property. For me it matters to have a comfortable accomodation in my price bracket. So even from guest's point of view this makes no sense to have a property with 3.7 be there and kicking and a property with 4.2 be removed. But again this is all on my assumtion of the fact that when does one get's removed..

[Huma0]

It's not just the minimum 4.7 rating that's an issue. There are other things that have been introduced, and who knows what else is to come, to pressurise the traditional Airbnb host. Acceptance Rate is one of these. We had previously been told that we were not being measured on this. Then, it became apparent that you need a 95% Acceptance Rate to qualify for Airbnb Plus. Now, it seems that we must ALL have 88% or above to be listed at all.

I didn't even know about that one until the other day when I started getting a stupid computer generated warning on my dashboard telling me I had slipped below minimum standards. That didn't make sense to me, seeing as I'm easily meeting Superhost standards, plus the listing in question has 100% 5 star reviews, i.e. a 5.0 average.

After a bit of investigation, I realised the warning was referring to my acceptance rate for that listing, which is stupid, because I am meeting that target. I spoke to a CS rep to ask why I was being told I was below standard for a target I was meeting. She told me she didn't know and that I should just ingore the warning message for now, but also that I should accept ALL bookings going forward. ALL of them.

Really?? I asked her, what about all those people who want to book who have clearly not understood the listing or are choosing to ignore my rules, e.g. want to bring their kids when my listing is child free or trying to sneak in extra unpaid guests? Seems I now have to call Airbnb each time something like this happens because if I hit 'decline', I may be delisted.

Great reward for my 5.0 average, don't you think?

[Rebecca160]

@Huma0 that is truly depressing. There is just no way to accept all bookings, as some people clearly did not bother to read or understand the listing or they would have discovered a serious mid-match. Does Airbnb truly want us to call them every time a guest books who should not have done? I cannot imagine they would be happy or willing to run interference.

[Huma0]

@Rebecca160

Yes, it seems pretty nonsensical. Of course, in these circumstances, I always try to clarify with the guest first and get them to cancel their booking request if possible, but as we all know, not all guests are responsive, there is often a large time difference, and that 24 hour clock is ticking away...

The other annoying thing is the reason that listing has a lower acceptance rate is because somehow Instant Book was turned on overnight without my permission, so I had bookings I simply had to decline. Had I been more experienced at the time, I would have called Airbnb to get them to cancel them for me, but I was just starting out. Anyway, back then we were not aware that our Acceptance Rate would make any difference...

If Airbnb decides to move the goal posts for something like this, they should not take into account accepted/declined bookings prior to the change. They should apply the percentage from the date the change is announced (don't remember seeing an announcement about this, but that's another issue). It's only fair...

[Karen307]

Congrats on your perfect 5.0, @Huma3!  It's rather unbelieveable  to me that we are being encouraged to accept ALL bookings, even from those who don't meet our criteria, e.g., have pets, children, no profile picture, no prior host recommendations, a criminal record, etc. I'm definitely considering other options than ABB. Wonder why there aren't more direct competitors.

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

All right people I spend good portion of my moring on being on hold for 3 calls to Airbnb to get some clarity on the "4.5 rating and listing get removed" part. I spoke to 3 different agents and all 3 of them gave a consistent answer that :

1) Listings 4.5 ratings and below will be removed is not true. In their poliet and little diplomatic way it has meant to just remind the hosts to work harder and be a better HOST!

2) There is no different criteria of ratings for property managers and normal hosts. It is 4.5 ( supposedly minimum rating) to be maintained by all properties which are listed on Airbnb platform.

3) Each time I was connected to a representative in Philippenes - So at least the reps there have been informed of the same answer to this question.

I tried to somehow get connected to reps in different location but each time my call got divereted to the office in Phillipenes. Now it could be a geographical division of calls like : Euro zone properties - calls get diverted to certain geographic location and North & south America gets diverted to a different location and so on and so forth . This would be improtant to know to figure out if this rule of minimum rating is also geographically driven or not. I was not able to validate this. If any of you who are not located in euro zone can make few calls and get some clarity, may be it will help clear some doubts.

[Ange2]

How things have changed since the early days when without hosts willing to take a risk this business would never have been viable.  Fast forward – we are now merely product squeezed through an increasingly demanding algorithm that makes no sense to the human interaction known as hosting.