Wow, I'm fairly amazed at how the superhost status is calculated and equally by the Airbnb costumer support .
Firstly, below is an email I sent to support, it explains fairly well what my objection is, namely, that superhost satus is calulated and penalises hosts when guests fail to review.
MY MESSAGE TO AIRBNB
I would like you to explain why is it that when people fail to leave a review that is counted in the superhost rating.
I'm happy enough to be judged on the reviews people leave because those reviews reflect the experience guests have when staying at my accommodation place. HOWEVER, when someone fails to leave a review that is no indication of the quality of my (or others) accommodation but probably an indication that the guest is perhaps, perhaps too busy, perhaps distracted, perhaps doesn't realise how important it is to leave a review, perhaps traveling and not had the time to review in the time frame required or perhaps any one of a million other reasons why someone might not leave a review but whatever the reason I shouldn't be judged by their failings.
I can not hold a gun to their head (figuratively speaking) and demand they review their stay. I think this is a real failing of the airbnb review and superhost status. By all means, work your superhost status out on completed reviews and make a determination based on actual submissions as it is hardly the hosts fault if someone fails to lodge a review is it, and it is hardly a good indicator of the quality or otherwise of the accommodation if someone doesn't leave a review.
Also, the impact of someone failing to review your accommodation is enormous in real terms. Think about this, 1 review not submitted means you lose 6 possible 5star ratings and that will very quickly knock your percentage down especially if a few people fail to review.
I think you seriously need to look at your superhost status requirements and only link them to "ACTUAL' reviews not total number of trips.
Also, look at my communication percentage which is '100%'. Why should I be marked down because others don't communicate or review in a similar manner? I don't receive superhost status, not because my accommodation is poor or of high enough standard as, based on my reviews, I would gain superhost status, I don't gain superhost status because a handful of people don't bother completing a review, is that fair?
Please, I await your considered response.
END MESSAGE FROM ME TO AIRBNB
Ok, I'm amazed this happens and it really is an easy fix. It is a simple problem with coding where by the arithmetic should sample 'ACTUAL REVIEWS SUBMITTED' rather than 'TOTAL TRIPS' or guests. Put simply I, (or you) should not be judged or scored because of the failings of others. We all know that the online world is full of requests to complete this survey and that survey and your inbox is often full of requests to review and I'm sure even Brian Chesky doesn't get time to respond to all requests to review.
Finally, as I began, I'm not only alarmed at how percentages are calculated for superhost status I'm also dissappointed by the response. You would think that a problem that is critical to the integrity of their platform would be responded to and yes when I sent in the message I got the standard auto response, 'Thanks you for your message - you can expect a reply shortly'.
So, rather than respond to it they pursued a rather novel approach to costumer service and support and after a short period I got this response,
This support case is now closed.
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It is amazing, no other organisation, be that a reserch, statistical, financial, government, gaming or any other that I can think of would ever include 'NON SUBMISSION' into a calculation but airbnb not only does this to determine superhost status but when you try to point this out to them they just simply fail to respond.
Just as an aside I also contacted airbnb about a failure in their coding and finally after protacted conversations they accepted the coding was failing on one aspect of their website and I got a response saying a team was 'working on it' . Well, it is still failing and I haven't heard back from anyone about this. I'll post a discussion on this shorlty but in short I'd be concerned if I was the CEO if their hosts who are well motivated and well meaning have their attempts to bring up issues that relate to failings and problems are ignored because you a feeding a storm of discontent.