Where to find your Acceptance Rate & other AirBnb Plus metrics

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

Hi -- I saw some people not sure where to find their acceptance rate metric. It's not on the hosting dashbaord, which is annoying, but here's how to find it. Being in an AirBnb Plus city (Austin) I wanted to see what my acceptance rate was.

After connecting with ABB support, they showed me how to access it. I'll try to describe it as clearly as I can, since it's kind of buried, but not that hard to find. I should also note that I'm NOT SURE if people who are in non-Plus cities see this same thing or not. So if, on your end, it's not where I describe and you're not currently in a Plus city, I'm guessing that's the reason...

1) From the main hosting dash (airbnb.com/hosting), click on the "Listings" tab up top.

2) Click on your listing (also clicking "Edit" will take you to the same page)

3) You should now be on the "Listing Details" tab

4) Scroll all the way down on the bottom of the page, and beneath where it says "Listing status" there's a new AirBnb Plus logo with a "Learn More" button. (see sccreenshot below)

Where the AirBnb Plus metrics can be found

5) When you click on the "Learn More" box, it gives you a chart to look at your progress of becoming Plus eligible (see screenshot below). As you can see from my chart below, I have some work to do on my acceptance rate to become eligible 😞

Acceptance rate and other AirBnb Plus metrics

Putting my disagreements aside in terms of the 95% acceptance rate being a requirement, I hope this helps anyone looking for this number, since I don't think it really exists anywhere else. ABB support told me that although it says in that chart that "Eligibility requirements are measured over 30 days," the acceptance rate is actually measured on a 365-day basis and is adjusted day-by-day on an ongoing basis. What's not helpful about this is that it doesn't tell you WHEN your Declines happened, so you can't know when your accentence rate percentage will improve... I guess the best way to do that is to look through your Inbox and manually find where your declines were in the last 365-days (??)

Anyway... hope this helps. Figured I'd share so no one else has take the time to contact ABB with the same question.

Thanks!

[Huma0]

Oh, and it's only 82% for my other listing, so I'll NEVER be able to get that up to 95%.

[Pete28]

In theory if it's over a year avg the the worst case is it would take a year if you only decline 5%. 

You can drive yourself mad chasing the never ending stats that Airbnb has created and the year long avg makes things worse. If this is how they treat their customers I can only imagine what it is like to work for them....

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

@Huma0 -- I totally agree with you that it's misleading to say one thing about a metric, then create an entire program which directly impacts our search visabilit by saying the opposite about that same metric. Since I basically already have an open line of communication with someone who seems to know a lot about the Plus program via AirBnb Help messenger, I plan to ask them why this is the case.

I also plan to ask, "what constitutes something that isn't an acceptance?" When trying to look through my Inbox yesterday, since you can see where all your declines might have happened through the year, I see some instances where there were, for example, unanswered inquiries, and they still say "Inquiry"... Does that count against our acceptance rate too? I plan to clear that up by asking AirBnb about it.

[Huma0]

@Adam-and-Ike-0

Yes, it would be super useful to have clarification on how this rate is calculated because no one posting about it on the forums seems to be sure.

[Pete28]

It would be super helpful if airbnb would communicate in PUBLIC FORUMS like this. The point of having a community is for a company to get feedback and provide help.

I work at a large tech company where the expectation is that we would answer all questions on our product areas within a week and provide stats each week on progress.

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

Will report back when I hear more from ABB... I mean, if it's going to ultimately impact our ability to generate revenue, it should really say it in a Help article like this one: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/360/can-i-decline-booking-inquires-or-reservation-requests

(Sigh)

[Sandra126]

Next time someone sends me a booking request for the incorrect dates (because the ones they wanted were taken) I plan to accept, the guest can sort any cancellations out with Air. This happens quite frequently, but I have to cut down on my declines! @Adam-and-Ike-0, Do let us know when you have more info from your source.

[Welcome0]

Thank you @Adam-and-Ike-0 for the detailed explanation. My city Hicksville, NY is not covered yet by the Airbnb Plus, but I am getting ready for it. Really, there is nothing out of the ordinary for Plus other than sending someone over to check out the place.  My guests have done it already and posted great reviews! How do they plan to accomplish this visit, eh?!?! If the place is occupied, it will be impossible to process. 

Yea, right! Just like, when they offered me a photographer to come to my Airbnb to take pictures 4 or 5 times. No one ever showed up! Always an excuse and a cancelation on their end. When an apartment is occupied, you cannot take pictures. Finally, I took my own pictures and posted them.  Thanks, for nothing! 

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

For the sake of total transparency... As promised, here's what I sent to AirBnb Help the other day, and their response is in the Reply right under this:

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Hi [ABB rep's name] - thanks for answering these questions the other day. They were very helpful, and I appreciate it very much. Your answers bring up two follow-up questions/concerns I have, if that's aright. I'm not trying to be difficult... I think I'm just trying to express how I and other hosts might see some of the Plus program's snags from our perspective, and to try and get them cleared up as best as possible:

1) How is the acceptance rate for AirBnb Plus determined? I know this may seem like a simple question, but just to be 100% sure... is it only for the instances in the previous 365-days where we actually clicked "Decline" for a Booking Request? Are there any other factors or actions at all that would affect the acceptance rate metric?

2) When I see Help articles like this one (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/360/can-i-decline-booking-inquires-or-reservation-requests), which is what Hosts have been working off of, why is there no mention that declining requests actually could impact us to be exluded from special programs? To be totally transparent, it's not a secret that not being a part of Plus is a negative in many respects because --even as it says on AirBnb's main Plus Hosting page-- Plus listings receive, "Elevated placement and increased visibility in search results." This is important for hosts in order to generate revenue...

So, my question is: Why is the 95% acceptance rate considered a metric for this program, in light of the fact that AirBnb has never said that it could be a linch pin for hosts not being able to take part on programs that give them better rankings, thus more visibility and thus more potential revenue?

If a host is just declining people all the time, I can understand how your algorithym might start to move them down the rankings, as this Help article suggests: (https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/39/what-factors-determine-how-my-listing-appears-in-search-resul...). However, like that same article says, "Occasionally rejections are necessary," but in the case of Plus, this could dramatically impact someone's ability to take part in the Plus program for a year or longer (which we weren't made aware of until now).

This seems like AirBnb has been saying one thing, yet planning something else behind the curtain. I mean, if you are looking for "truly exceptional" hosts [NOTE: "truly exceptional" was what the ABB rep used to describe their ideal Plus Hosts], that sometimes means knowing when someone is going to be a bad guest, or when someone looking to book your listing is really from a marketing company or something like that. There could be a million reasons why it makes sense to decline a booking request, and the best AirBnb hosts know that simply letting everyone into their home is not a sign of their exceptionality.

I'm looking forward to hearing more from you about these questions/concerns, and thanks again for taking the time to help with this!

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ABB's response is below in the reply...

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

Here's ABB's response to the above questions/concerns I asked them about:

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Thanks for your follow up. To answer your first question, yes declining a formal reservation request is the only action that is considered for acceptance rate. Acceptance directly correlates to, accepting formal requests/the process of establishing a booking.

The rest of your feedback is welcomed and appreciated. A better place to share your concerns and suggestions is through our Feedback Form, which I've linked here:
https://www.airbnb.com/help/feedback

The Feedback Form is a place where we gather information to be referenced by the appropriate team when making changes and improvements.

As you know, Airbnb Plus is new for us as of the last 2 weeks. We appreciate you highlighting where updates need to be made in our Help Center and the level of information that you appreciate as a host. We are always doing our best to meet a balance and our host's thoughts, suggestions, and concerns help us get there.

Thanks for sharing via the form and let me know if you have any other specific questions that I can answer for you. Take care!

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

So, we got one answer, but the real meat of the issue was avoided. I submitted Feedback, but... really...?  (sigh) ಠ_ಠ

[Adam-and-Ike-0]

Just as an update... Not sure if anyone else's button changed that we'd referred to earlier in our initial post, but the "Learn More" button changed to "Get Started." It seems as though our acceptance rate has adjusted up to the Plus standard (which seems weird to have happened so fast from 88% up to 95%, but we guess we had a lot of declines last year around the springtime, and since it's been more than 365 days, they were factored out of our yearly average). We filled out a questionnaire about our place and now it is in 'Review'... AirBnb says by email that they've received thousands of applications and it could take a few months or more for the next step.

Regardless, I can't seem to now locate where to see those metrics which were once accessible from that button we referred to in our original post. Not sure if others' 'Learn More' button is still in the same place or not.

Thanks!

[Mike340]

@Adam-and-Ike-0

For me,personally, I dont really care what my acceptance rate is....in the sense that...if I decline a request (rare) it would be for a very good reason...and I wont change that decision making...just to support some statistic.