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First they introduce categories, which their unintelligent AI bot is in charge of, so listings aren’t in correct categories, then they introduce Guest Favorite, which has no clear criteria, and eliminate the Superhost filter, then they mark listings with a 4.78 rating as in the bottom 10% (WTF? There are more than 10% of listings with ratings lower than that).
Then they tell 5000 successful Experience hosts with high ratings that their listings don’t meet “standards”.
Their AI bot is deleting listings from legit hosts which it thinks are duplicates, when in fact the host took back control of their listing from property managers who were doing a terrible job.
They seem to suspend the listings of any host who makes the mistake of reporting egregious guest behavior, and their home page now looks like an ad for Disneyland.
Their CS dept. is a bad joke with reps who can’t even understand a simple issue, or know company policies, who close tickets without resolving anything, while praising you for being a Superhost and saying they are happy to have resolved your issue.
And Airbnb does all this stuff with no warning, no explanations, and keep how they assess all this stuff a big secret from its users.
This is what happens when a company decides that a few “ideas” people, too arrogant to solicit input from users, and a bunch of techies creating AI bots and algorithms, think this business direction is some improvement on real people, who are paying attention and actually care about their customers, running a business.
It’s even more “off” than my example. There’s a listing that has a 4.25 rating (but only 8 reviews) that is NOT in the bottom 10%.
I wish they would do like Vrbo and let you sort by number of reviews or rating. But as @muddy says, AirBnB is arrogant enough to think they know better what you want than you do, so they’ll decide what to show you and what they want you to book.
I guess I should be more explicit why I’m surprised these listings aren’t culled. In my city, the “bottom 10%” have multiple reviews saying it was not the advertised unit or the unit wasn’t cleaned. It isn’t just a string of picky guests, but substandard conditions that drive guests from using AirBnB at all.
The “bottom 10%” tag, at least on my web UI, is showing up only on the review page.
This is mind boggling and frustrating. AirBnB won’t release the criteria for its new “guest favorite” category (and presumably bottom 10%) so we don’t know what to strive for. Meanwhile, this is from a listing with 10 reviews, no “bottom 10%”:
That’s what I meant about listings with a 4.78 rating not possibly being in the bottom 10%- there are far more than 10% of listings with ratings far below 4.78.
And how can a listing with 4.78 be in bottom 10%, when a listing with a 4.86 is supposedly in the top 10%? 80% of listings are rated between 4.78 and 4.86? Gimme a break.
And what are the parameters of these “bottom” and “top” percentages? 10% of all Airbnb listings? 10% in their category, i.e. entire homes vs. rooms? 10% of the listings in their country? In their town?
And while I understand what “based on ratings and reviews” means, what does “reliability” refer to?
I suspect this is just a very incompetently programmed algorithm that wasn’t tested before going live - there’s no other explanation for the senselessness of it.
Here’s the explanation I got via email. The conversations focusing on just the ratings are not the whole story:
“The highlight is updated regularly using various factors, including:
-Overall star ratings and feedback in guest reviews
–Subcategory ratings for check-in, cleanliness, accuracy, Host communication, location and value
-Host cancellation rates
-Quality-related issues reported to Airbnb Community Support”
But Airbnb sends those “quality” messages when some fickle guest gives a host undeserved 3 or 4* ratings for something that is BS. Like they mark down location because they would have liked to have been closer to the beach, even though the host clearly stated that it was a 10 minute drive. Or value, even though they got everything promised, just because they would have liked to pay less. Or check-in, because they simply failed to read the host’s check-in instructions or arrived 2 hrs before check-in time and couldn’t get in.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see this as a way to weed out bad listings, because it is based on ratings, which we all know can be “off” or retaliatory, and algorithms. It assumes that all the ratings guests leave are fair. It isn’t necessarily based on reality, it’s just another thing designed to stress hosts out.
A review score can show a very small margin between top 10% and bottom 10% which to me is extremely confusing and illogical.
A brand new Airbnb user who is looking for an accommodation needs to be fully aware of the skewed Airbnb review system in order to see the difference between a 4.78 (worst 10% listing) and 4.86 (best 10% listing).
Also, good hosts who just started out and get some of ‘those guests’ who cannot be satisfied could instantly drop to the bottom 10% just if a couple guests call Airbnb because the room is not dark enough or there is a dog barking next door. There may well be justified instances of listings definitely belonging into the bottom 10% category but I’m afraid this system might punish some serious hosts as well, accidentally.
I’m not against helping guests to find great stays but then the review system should be a little more logical as in 1=worst, 2=bad, 3=mediocre, 4=good, 5=great - but maybe only I see it this way.
I would assume that most internet users have figured out that search results can be sorted by “best to worst” for example (besides Airbnb already pushing the best to the top by default). So I don’t understand how ‘this’ has now made a big difference?
Besides, Superhost seems to drift off as more and more ‘useless’ since guest are more inclined to search for Guest Favorites with an additional gamified feature of finding the 1%, 5% and 10% on the top
Not sure if this improves the guest experience that dramatically - given the implementation of this system but I guess it’s just a matter of staying up to date with overall internet trends to stand out and ‘provide added value’…
It seems like all these new ratings are because some IT person had too much time on their hands. What it does point out is the failing of the 5-star review system - not enough real differentiation when 4 stars is “it’s horrible” and 5 stars is “it’s not horrible”, so they have to go to other (not obvious) parameters to differentiate.
I don’t disagree, but the definition of quality vs sub-standard is very unclear, and can be razor-thin on review ratings, as @Hosterer and I pointed out.
When I was a manager for a large company, we were forced to give at least 5% of our employees the lowest rating. Then we had to put them on a “performance improvement plan” with well-defined metrics for success or failure. Many of those employees just found a job somewhere else and quit, but it was really clear what deficiencies they had in their performance.
I spent some time looking through the listings on our island (St Lucia) for the top honors. I found, as with most of AirBnB’s approach, that I can’t decipher their thinking.
AirBnB did NOT show the higher-rated properties to me first, and it is not available as a filter.
So @JJD is not correct about the accolade helping guests find those listings first unless AirBnB changes the rank ordering in the future.
Several listings with 10-11 reviews (all 5 star) and only hosting for 5 to 9 months are in the top 1%.
One of my neighbors with 62 reviews (all 5 star) didn’t make the top 10%, but one neighbor with a 4.92 and 38 reviews is in the top 5%.
A villa with a 4.73 and 15 reviews (only one subcategory at 5 stars) is in the top 10%. We have 42 reviews, all five stars, only one subcategory under 5 (4.9 location), and we don’t make it to the top 10%.
The only things I can think of that are keeping us from being in the top 10% (or higher) are cancellations and lack of SuperHost status (not enough of our bookings this past winter were from AirBnB).
I’ve never cancelled on anyone, but I called for some admin cancellations during COVID in 2020 and 2021 when the government imposed restrictions on us and the guests. It was clear to the CS agent that the guest wanted to cancel, too, but I called, thinking I was helping the guest by taking care of it. No more Ms. Nice Guy in the future for me!
And when a guest makes some complaint to Airbnb about something like cameras, privacy violations, or if a host calls to report a party and asks for Airbnb to cancel the booking, all of which results in Airbnb suspending the listing, even when Airbnb determines that the cameras complained about were fully disclosed in the listing, or that the guest complaint has no validity, and the listing is unsuspended, that stays on the host’s account as a black mark, even though the host did nothing wrong.
I’m sure those undeserved black mark “notes” are part of this algorithm, just like the neutral cancellations @PitonView had to make, due to no fault of her own, but due to govt. Covid restrictions.
Everything that goes into these %s and Guest Favorites relies upon the faulty assumption that the guest is always right in their ratings and complaints.
Just saw in my area a host with 3 listings and ratings from about 4.4 to 4.67 seems to still be a superhost. How is that possible. Thought he would be in the underworld.
I don’t know at this point if I should even bother trying to understand that. Maybe the latest reviews were super bad and dropped the current rating down so low but they still carry the Superhost status from the last evaluation period - which they would loose in the following one.
Not keen on waiting for something like this to happen to us. Perhaps there were other things going on for those hosts who got kicked unjustified? Just scary.
I guess Airbnb is applying these new rating features on a regional or local level which we as the normal folks who only have public access information cannot use to make an educated guess why they do what they do.
Totally agree on the razor sharp line between those extreme ends due to a completely broken review system they created. In the end, I believe the vast majority of ratings on Airbnb happens between 4.4 and 5.0 - a numerical range of roughly a 1/10 of the entire scale.
Let’s wait and see how the guests’ response to this will be and how the reservations will hopefully go through the roof
I think that’s absolutely the best attitude. I don’t know about others but I definitely don’t have the time to worry or try to work out every weird thing that Airbnb does.
If my star rating drops, then by all means Airbnb, send me an email telling me to pull my socks up. And I will pay zero notice. I’d rather just get on with running my business.
I’m way too old to be ticked off by some automated email, after all.
Also agree with Jaquo & Hosterer,
Best reward to concentrate on your business not Airbnb. Keep looking, for investments that will make the guest experience better, eg. more charging points, additional or improved appliance, fine tune the guest information I send them or signage in the house. I find it flows and ebbs. One period I will get a lot of Airbnb bookings, then the next Airbnb will be down but BDC up or I will have a flat period and then I will get a couple of bookings via Expedia brand. To me it appears most guests just look at the picture and the price, after they enter number of guests and dates. It is clear to me most do not read much or are very scientific in their search before they book. Not a good use of my time to worry about Airbnb antics.
There is a host in my city with two dozen (illegal?) listings and abysmal reviews that somehow seems to keep Superhost. I don’t know how he does it. He does have reviews I believe may be fake (same account leaving identical reviews on multiple listings) but I’ve never seen his average rating reach the required 4.8.
I read through all the stuff that Airbnb claims goes into the % algorithm, and as far as I can tell, it’s BS.
I have never had less than 5*overall or in any category. No guest has ever complained about anything in a review, they have made lovely comments. I have never cancelled a booking, I have never had a guest report a “quality issue”.
So according to what Airbnb claims the percentages are based on, seems like I should be in the top 1%, not the top 10%, as I am.
I’m not complaining, I just don’t see how anyone in my private rooms category could have better metrics than I do to get into the top 1 or 5%. There is nothing I could possibly do better, if their criteria are to be believed.
Nope. Experienced Superhosts with hundreds of glowing reviews have gotten their listings suspended the instant some total newbie guest trying to scam a refund calls Airbnb and claims there were bedbugs, that the host invaded their privacy, that there were hidden cameras.
This is how Airbnb rolls now. Guilty until deemed innocent, with no regard for the history of the host. They don’t even have the decency to tell the host their listing has been suspended. The hosts usually only realize it when they suddenly stop getting views, inquiries or bookings.
