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Perhaps the ‘Superhost’ award is not necessary for guests to know?
For example, a lot of of competitive sports (golf, bowling, or my sport Ballroom Dancing) allow pros to dance with amateurs, and they have an award called ‘top student’, which is simply the student who entered the most events (and paid the most money). We never see that award as being about quality, but it certainly about being ‘top’. I think ‘Superhost’ falls in the category. it is about our work ‘behind the scenes’ and now seems to represent the hosts that are the most successful at… being making the most money for airbnb and consequently themselves, but not necessarily the best at things like home decor or messaging…
It would, if Airbnb took things into account like that the host has 100 5* ratings, and then gets an obviously retaliatory 1* review from a newbie guest and removes it without a battle.
And I’m sure hosts don’t appreciate getting auto-generated messages telling them they have one thing to “work on” if a guest leaves 2 stars for check-in, when the guest’s check-in issue was a result of them not bothering to read or follow the check-in info they were sent.
We received a four-star rating from guests that left a glowing review (“you’ll be amazed by the view…great hosts… great staff” - only negative was that the road was rough on the way up but “the destination was worth the trip”). We met with the guests the night before they left and they were super-happy and want to come back soon. They were older, so I think the four-star was because we’re upscale but not the Ritz.
AirBnB told us to ask them where we could do better. I guess paving roads is now the responsibility of the host.
That’s another Superhost criteria that has nothing to do with a host’s good hosting, and everything to do with putting $ in Airbnb’s service fee coffers.
Of the 4 criteria for Superhost, only “Response rate” is really something hosts have total control over. You could say “No cancellations” is also, but if a booked guest sets off red flags in messages to the point that you really don’t want them as guests, and Airbnb refuses to do a penalty-free cancellation, the host is stuck either having to deal with a guest they can tell is going to be a royal pain (and will likely leave a bad review), or bite the bullet and cancel, getting fined and probably losing their Superhost status, unless they are high volume hosts.
It sounds like you’ve gotten quite a few of these? Do you vet your guests to weed out the red flags? I’ve been hosting since 2016 and never had a bad or retaliation review and I know there are other hosts who can say the same.
I do realize that hosts can sail along for years with 5 star reviews and then get one of “those” guests, so I’m not so smug as to believe I’m immune from that- it just seems that if you’ve had more than one or two retaliation reviews, there might be things you can do to better vet prospective guests, or deal with them differently while they’re in residence.
Hey Muddy, how many reviews have you received in total? I have about 400 reviews, and maybe 5 or 6 are retaliation reviews. That’s enough to get a rating below 4.8 for superhost status.
Muddy, your beliefs would radically change if you started offering accommodation for more than one person and hosted in a city, where the fauna is completely different.
