What do you think of the Airbnb superhost program?

The travel credit comes in an email titled “You’ve earned $100 for travel!” It’s from Airbnb but maybe you deleted it thinking it’s a scam email.

You should get a chance soon enough to use it on a real booking that ends up not passing your “sniff test” before they arrive. [quote=“Stephanie_Borns, post:80, topic:8098”]
So I may not be unbiased about the issue.
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I’ve been trying to figure out why my experience is so different from many others here. I’ve repeatedly said that I think it’s travelers over tourists. It also seems that having a whole place rental separate from the host home is problematic. I honestly think SH status is not terribly relevant to the type of guest one gets. But we all have valid biases based on our experiences.

I’ve put a line in our listing: “We are great for telecommuters, writers looking for solitude, musicians who need to practice, museum fans, hikers, nature lovers, train buffs and history geeks, not a good fit for wedding guests - if you are coming to our town to attend a wedding, you will be happiest in a hotel.”

I’m paraphrasing but you get the idea - and yes, we are going to start screening for that but my screening process happens during the communication before they book in most cases and anyway, I would never cancel on a real guest unless it was impossible to avoid it. It’s important to me that people keep their word. We keep our promises.

This apartment is frat-boy filthy, the bathroom is piled high with wet towels and the whole place reeks of Axe body spray. Never again.

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I think it’s because the travelers passing through your town have FAR less expectations than tourists who have shelled out their life savings for a holiday.

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Dear Jan,
I feel sometimes the same way, though I am new, I do not like the pressure from AirB&B about the immediate writing of review, the guest just left and I am supposed to write a review, sometimes even to ask them to do it…this is the one thing I do not like. What if they write just that they liked the house and had good time? Would that be enough? I don’t have the aspiration to be a SUPER host,
I think that I know what I am offering. I did not know about all the advantages, on the beginning a friend was helping me a little bit, but charged me 10%, sometimes I was just sitting in her apartment
in the time when she went to pick up her next guest, but that is so with good friends.

I think I might have. How long were you a SH before you got a perk?

Oh gawd I hate that shit. :o

I think you are very right about the type of guests you get, which are the “passing through” types. But also, I think it may also have to do with the fact that you cater to people with dogs. This is a big draw for people to have a welcoming place for their animals when they are on the road that’s not creepy Motel 6 that costs even more.

I’m wondering how many of us accept pets. I know I don’t. There’s no fenced in yard for one thing.

If you subbed regular ed high or middle the air is thick with AXE. :smile:

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I get a headache just thinking about it. I can seriously TASTE that stuff when I’m around it.

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A year. You have to be a SH for a year.

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Although it looks like you posted to Kona, I know you are talking to me. Very few of my guests have dogs. I’m guessing it’s about 15%. Another 15-20% pick my place because they love dogs. I’d guess at least half couldn’t care less one way or the other.

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To my utter surprise I clocked over the 80% mark this morning from my very last guest for the season and have now met the requirements for SH… my assessment is apparently done by the 14th, so we’ll see what I think then.

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A traveler usually has a lot less needs than a destination tourist. Do many of your guests arrive late and leave early in the day @KKC?

@Mearns Yes, I’d say about half are here less than 15 hours.

That is cool. Many of my guest arrive late (necessitating night runs to island) and always have to leave by 8am for an early flight out a few days later. Fine by me.

I take issue with your comments. I didn’t even know about “Super Host” when I started hosting two years ago. When I did reach that status I didn’t think it was a big deal, but it did spur me on to provide the best Airbnb experience I could manage. You are probably correct that sooner or later I will get a less than 5 star review, but that will inspire me to work even harder. As for you having so many bookings it’s impossible to please them all, you only need 5 star reviews 80% of the time to qualify. Any host should be able to attain this. Good luck in the future.

We’ve been SH for two years. Never got a thing.

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Oh - and I tried to use the dedicated SH help line today because one of our upcoming guests is not getting our messages and so is sending me panicky texts freaking out and (literally) asking to be reassured -

I couldn’t get any help from them because they want banking information before they’ll even talk to you.

I’m not handing over my banking information over the phone. They have the reservation number, my name and (against my better judgement) my birthdate, seems like you have to strip naked and grovel at their feet to get a shred of help from these people.

And it’s not as though I am asking them to help me with a mistake I made. We use the platform exclusively. The platform sometimes fucks up - as we all know. All I want is for them to fix it.

Tweeted them too - no answer.

Pissed?

Well, suffice it to say, at this point, they’d have an easier time holding a conversation about the benefits of a universal income with Anne Coulter than trying to talk to me.

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I’ve hosted over 200 guests over the past year. I earned super-host status almost immediately and have never lost it.

If I can offer one piece advice for those wanting to reach super-host status and/or keep it, never review your guest first. This only triggers them to review you. Receiving no review is a million times better than a bad or even a 4-star review. I only review if reviewed first, even for those guests that I’m dying to say something about.

In other words, don’t invite people to review you by reviewing them. The more reviews you get, the more likely you are to loose or never reach superhost status.

Perhaps I’m a little lucky because 99% of my guests are on vacation, or spending a romantic weekend out of the nearby city. So they’re generally in a happier place mentally than someone might be if traveling on business. This may lead to better ratings than a city listing would generally receive.

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@Colorado hmm… this is complete opposite of what I’ve done so maybe that’s not the secret.

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