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.

[Rebecca181]

@Mathieu-And-Kunj0 @Rebecca160 and all: So I had to call Airbnb about another matter and happened to get an amazing rep. So I decided to ask her about the new rating system, who might get delisted, etc. 

She said the following, as summarized here:

1) Hosts will NOT get delisted for falling below 4.7 without receiving many warnings first via email. If the emails are not responded to (including correcting whatever the issue is) the host may be delisted. 

2) Hosts should always politely challenge any Airbnb rep that refuses to remove what is obviously a malicious, retaliatory reviews. This rep said she removes many of these herself. She said reviews are supposed to be relevant and not needlessly harmful and destructive to either host or guest. It would be wonderful if all reps were as knowledgeable, caring, and empowered as the rep I reached today - But, as we know, they are not, and several hosts here have lost their Super Host status over an undeserved and/or retaliatory review that a rep refused to remove. Maybe a training issue? If so, it would be great to see this addressed.

Here's one new concern I have, based on the above: I myself do not receive Airbnb emails except as related to my reservations. I receive no updates from the CC, no emails from Corporate, etc, and my notification settings are all correct. It is not going into Spam or anywhere else, I just don't receive it.  In fact, the rep is going to kick this over to the tech team to try and resolve, as I have not received emails beyond the basics related to my reservations since signing up. If other hosts have this same issue, and/or the Airbnb emails warning them they may be delisted go into 'Spam' or 'All Mail' (which are the Social / Promotional email folders in Gmail that many people never look at) they might not ever know they were in trouble with the algorithm-driven Bot and next thing they know, they are delisted. Given this, I think it would be better to receive this kind of important information via the Airbnb message thread as well as by email.

On a related note: I have also been thinking more about why professionally property-managed listings might be delisted only if they consistently fall below 3.7 versus 4.7 (if what I was told by that one property manager I mentioned is true): In my neighborhood, I am one of a hand-full of non-property managed listings. In fact, I am the only person living full-time in my home in this one section of ocean-front houses I live in. The rest are ALL property managed vacation listings that are now starting to post all of their inventory on Airbnb.

It is clear from reading the reviews that I am scoring much higher in cleanliness and other areas than the property-managed listings. I am not sure how many property managed listings could 'consistently' maintain a 4.7 'overall' rating, based on my observations this past year as I keep an eye on the market. Busy, harried cleaning crews (which are in short supply around here in the high season) aren't going to put the same amount of love, care, and energy into preparing the home for guests as an owner/host (hopefully) does. And, based on various press releases I've been reading, Airbnb very much wants to cater to these vacation rental-type listings so as to go head-to-head with Expedia, etc. So it may very well be that property managers have a lower bar set for them than we 'regular' hosts do.

If any property managers are reading this, it would be great if you could confirm that your properties will remain listed unless they fall below a 3.7 as we still do not know if this is accurate information or not and I think you are served by different customer support than we regular hosts are.

[Mimi64]

This is very interesting. The concerning part is that noone seems to be holding the guests accountable. I just had a. guest to give me a 3.9 rating and say that I had bugs.  A total lie because she slipped a third person into my home and I did not know until day 3 of the stay.  I had to ask her (after speaking with air bnb ) to leave.   The staff at air bnb were very supportive but could not do anything about her review.  This is very concerning. 

[Fred13]

   I been saying for a few weeks here that no, Airbnb is not about to de-list any listings that automatically falls below 4.7 for ~ it will not make economic sense ~ and they are not about to hand such a gift to the competition. They will treat each area (aka countries) differently however, to reach certain objectives (i.e. 5 of Superhost, etc). 

   Today Airbnb is indeed different, and they can 'afford' to be more selective, it is the usual cycle of any business, yes even hosts subconciously do it, when you think about it. The lowest rungs in any social ladder tends to be a nightmare to deal with, regardless of arena; and I can't think of anyone that relishes dealing with them if they do not have to.  So, if this leads to the elimination of many 'marginal' listings and hosts that shouldn't never even been there in the first place (speaking with new standards and applying therm retro-actively), that will serve everyone else well.

   The mistake they made with this incoming policy is to even talk about it with too-much ahead time, vs. running it through the 'think tank' (if they finally have one) vs. some ship of internal fools, and then just implement the changes. It would have eliminated wild speculations and undue fears among the populace. I know, I know where is the fun in that, for drama appears to be so much fun! 

   What a party pooper, I can be. 😄

[Tony134]

I for one don't mind these changes, but only for totally selfish reasons.

I'm fairly confident Airbnb is setting itself up for the most expensive class action lawsuit in the history of mankind. They claim we are self employed and they are just a listing service, yet simultaneously have more strict requirements for staying listed than any job on the market. I've worked many sales jobs, and that are quite happy with 80% returned good reviews on customer cards. 

[Mathieu-And-Kunj0]

@Rebecca181 Thank you for re-validating the information.. Being with one property as 4.5 and other as 4.8, we were at a bit of the loosing end. But now this one thing is clear that we won't be knocked out of airbnb straight off. But indeed if rest about the property managers be true and then I have to say it is not a fair game? Brings a larger question too- Why should prfessionally managed listings get any prefered treatment? If the aim of airbnb by changing the SH system is to higher up the notch of premium properties and hosts, then allowing professionally managed property with a lower ranking be on the same portal is not right. Neither from Host point of view nor from guest's interest. If being at par with competetion & big four booking portals is the aim then there should be no super host at all.. On those sites, one does not get de-listed. You just have star ranking. Less ranking meaning less bookings.. No ones asks you to higher up the hosting standards or to lower up rates. You as the property/host are completely in control. Again this is all on my assumption and trying to understand the reason or logic. Because Airbnb is a market smart company otherwise they won't be where they are today... 

[Neill1]

I have to agree on this. Airbnb will be losing my custom soon if they don't address it. I live in a very rural area which is stated and part of the charm yet i have been bad rated or LOCATION 😕

The system they have to rate is certainly flawed.

[Manon87]

I feel that this is Airbnb's way of pushing hosts to work hard on their listings.

It did worked in my case as I improved my listing by offering breakfast in a mission to keep my SH status but it also pushed me towards other platforms, somthing I would'nt have bothered to do prior to their aggresiveness towards hosts. Airbnb's new ways towards their hosts is pushing them away.

On top of now being listed on other platforms, I chose to close the listing on Airbnb this winter. The pressure put on hosts is not worth it in my case. I will rent to students as a long term rental instead so I can finally take a break from all the stress the review system is causing me.  

[Rebecca160]

@Manon87 so sorry that you will be leaving. I can certainly understand why you are doing so. There are not too many options for me, short of going entirely on my own, which I might do.

best of luck to you!

[David2974]

Yep, I have been communicating with Airbnb support on this, it's ridiculous! What other platform anywhere (or guest, for that matter) wouldn't regard a 4.5 out of 5 rating as very good?

Common sense (ha, when does that every matter?) would suggest that going below 4 would be where they could start reviewing somone's listing. But do we really expect them to care about us? They are large enough to simply get more on board all the time...

[David2974]

I also asked Airbnb support if we could cancel bookings from guests that we saw had bad reviews from other hosts that suggest they may be a difficult guest and rate low just for the hell of it, and of course they said we could not. Seems very little care about the hosts going on here...

[Mandi-S-Just-Business-Ro0]

The host response to this is obvious. Only book guests who are almost certain to give you 5 stars. 

To do this, look to guest history. There's a cute little chrome extension that can show this to you.

Obviously this puts newcomers at considerable risk. This is not your problem anymore. You are running a business. 

You may want to develop a specialty. Mine is long term bookings. 

You may also want to run one day sales or offer deals to previous  5 star people.

To boost your metrics, have everybody book through Air, charging minimal rates. This carries the added benefit of whiny relatives respecting your property.

Always deliver more than you promised. Little treats should be a surprise. 

In the same breath, "no" is a sentence. They will respect you more.

Explain to them that you want this to be a Five star experience for both parties and explain how that is a win-win. And if you need to know something, do not hesitate.

What people appreciate more than anything else is to be valued. 95 percent are civil. They appreciate the little kindnesses, like flowers from your garden, or showing them around. A few laughs definitely helps.

[Rebecca160]

It would be nice if we could screen all of our guests. In order to approximate that, we would have to turn off Instant Booking. When that is turned off, your listing's visibility automatically goes way, way down. In order to remain high in the list of potential rentals, we have to have Instant Book on. A guest with only one review can then Instant Book. True, there could be dialogue going back and forth to suss out whether the potential guest is s  a good fit, even with IB, and we could hope that the guest cancels, if it does not seem like a good fit (so we do not get dinged with a cancellation), but that may or may not happen. 

I go above and beyond for all of my guests and have lots of nice little touches to make their stay here even more magical. Still no matter how well I try to screen, or how appealing the space is,  a guest, even one who gives out frequent five stars, will get pissed that you charge for late check out (even though it is in the listing), or that you have a dog (even though he is described and pictured in the listing)or that the shared space really is a shared space with the host (very clearly spelled out in the listing) or the guest violates a house rule (always when a guest violates a rule, I know they will downgrade me a star!). 

I suggest that you have been lucky. And all it will take is one long term guest to give you a 4, just because someone will do that, and you will no longer have that beautiful rating. 

[Steven65]

In an oversaturated market and threat of regulation,   is  Airbnb setting very high standards to reduce host numbers? And if so, a cap makes more sense. 

[Helen427]

How are you fellow Community Centre & Hosts finding this 4.7 Ratings application of "Delisting", or are listings "paused"?

The most recent Superhost process may be impacting on Hosts if they are applying this procedure.

Very concerning all around with the change of Ratings to 4 stars "as expected" & "5 stars "better than expected" when Listings should be accurate & in compliance with Fair Trading Act NZ, or the equivalent, worldwide.

One doesn't want to risk not having an "accurate" listing and be subjected to an investigation under Fair Trading Act legislation by under representing or misleading potential Guests(customers), do they?

I'd far rather have an accurate listing than a misleading one.

[Gi-Angelo0]

Whoa! Where to check what's the "required"/minimum rating to keep running the listing, and not be delisted by Airbnb?