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.

[Lisa723]

You can't mathematically conclude that "most" London hosts will be leaving. If out of 10 hosts 9 have a 4.8 rating and 1 has a 2 rating, the average is 4.5, but only 10% of hosts are at risk.  Also, Airbnb seems to be using weaselly wording; what do "could be" and "consistently" mean?

But, I agree the whole thing is really dumb, and bad for accurate ratings.  As guests begin to understand the message hosts are getting, the well-intentioned ones will leave unrealistically high ratings and the vindictive ones will have strong incentive to leave unrealistically low ones.

[Rebecca160]

@Lisa723 the average in London is 4.5 . And I believe that one must currently maintain a 4.0 or get delisted, so hosts with less than 4 stars should not be included in the total number of listings. Or maybe I am wrong. Hard to know with rules changing.

You are correct that their wording could be clearer. I am looking at worst case, as that is how they presented it to me. 

[Lisa723]

Regardless, the general point is that a mathematical average does not give you any information about the mathematical distribution, which is what you need to draw any conclusions at all about how many listings are at risk. This would be true even if the range is limited to 4.0 - 5.0. (If out of 100 listings 22 have 4.0 and 78 have 4.7 the average is 4.5-- but only 22% are at risk.)

[Matthew285]

@Lisa723, @Rebecca160 when non-statistics people use the word "average", we honestly do not know if that is supposed to refer to:

1. The mean (that is, arithmetic mean)
2. The median
3. The mode

Depending on context, people use the word "average" for all of those. Who knows what definition Airbnb is using for "average" for the London hosts?

But yes, the 4.7 thing is bad.

[Lisa723]

@Matthew285 true, though I believe the most common definition is the mean. None of them give you distribution or answer the question of how many London listings will be at risk. Median can partially answer the question-- it could tell you whether half of the distribution was above/below 4.7, but that's it. Anyway we all agree the new guidance is stupid and that's the main thing. 🙂

[Matthew285]

@Lisa723 yes, I agree with you. The most common usage is certainly the arithmetic mean by far.

Context does matter a bit.

My example would be, when someone says "The average person" they are talking about the Mode, meaning the most frequently occuring. (And, of course, there is no arithmetic mean for a whole person.)

[Rebecca160]

@Matthew285And if 4.5 were referring to the mode, then that would be the most frequent star rating? Ouch. That could be really devastating. If it were for half above and half below, it could still be devastating, as we do not know how many are between the 4.5 and 4.7.  Whether it is 22% of hosts, 50%, 80 % or whatever percent, it is going to hurt real live people.  Worldwide.

[Mike340]

@Rebecca160 @Lisa

Airbnb is being staggeringly LAZY with this computer bot "warning" system 

It is like some backward management tool from the 1970's - 1980's 

Yes..a really dumb and insulting way to treat the very people who bring in your revenue. 

[Glyn42]

the average rating would be 9.02 in your example.... but I guess the point stands

[Mike340]

@Rebecca160 It certainly is a very strange business model that appears to be on the way.  

I can see it now at the Airbnb Top Table. --- Hey guys how about we kick out the more experienced and knowledgable hosts and down grade a good few of the hard working and conscientious and trustworthy Superhosts and...instead...why don't we PAY to get brand new, inexperienced hosts who know NOTHING and build the future with them .... WOW ..now that really is a business brainwave  !! 

Oh..and while we are at it...how about we carry on accepting more and more and more hosts in areas where there are already too many and ..with a bit of luck..we will get the entire area/City Airbnb business thrown out by the local council,so we lose the lot....jeez..what a corker of a business idea....how we are really getting somewhere 

Then..wait for it...how about....once we have all the beginners, lost all the Superhosts and had a good number of cities/areas banned from using Airbnb ...why dont we ..announce an IPO ...you know...get some of those dumb investors to pay big,big bucks for shares in a business they know nothing about but have heard the name alot...wow...awesome..what a seriously cracking idea...

Everything is taking shape..it is gonna be a cracking future 

[Rebecca160]

@Mike340 you got it!

[Fred13]

  No one is going to get delisted automatically just because they go below 4.7, without Airbnb taking into consideration many, many factors; locale, average area host performance, absolute desired numbers in a given area, etc. It is a global company, with the US comprising only 20% of its business today, they are not about to average star performance across continents anyway, because they are indeed very different, mentally & culturally.  They are after certain resulkts, they will probably have different minimums to compensate for such differences. 

   If something appears not to make sense, oftentimes is because is not the case.

[Rebecca160]

@Fred13Look on your dashboard for your performance and see for yourself.  It states it right there under Targets. I believe there was also an announcement about this sent out a few weeks ago.  I wish that I were making this up.

"Targets represent the average level of performance for all hosts on Airbnb. "

"Your listing could be removed if you consistently fall below the targets."   Certainly a lot of wiggle room in that statement, but the targets are totally unrealistic, IMHO. And the target star rating is 4.7.

[Fred13]

The word ~could~ is a loaded one (as is 'Target'), and in typical Airbnb speak fashion, they oftentimes use words to apply pressure, but will not  ~in all likelihood~ be applied in absolute terms, because? - it will cause some results that will not be beneficial to them. They are not about to use a standard in an area that a 4.7 minimum will eliminate an undesireable amount of hosts. That be suicidal from a business point of view, they are not about to hand their competitor such a 'gift'.

   They may be a bit 'herky jerky', but they are not stupid.