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Hi, Does Superhost appraisal for the period of Jan 2020 to Mar 2020 make sense as many countries have been in lockdown for the March period. I have just sent the message below to Airbnb and would appreciate what others think about this.
Ram
Hi,
This regards the quarterly evaluation for my listing after which the Superhost rating was removed.
The target not met because the rating was 4.77 for the quarter even though the property’s current rating is 4.8.
The property is located in India. Covid concerns and cancellations began in early March. We were lucky that we received new bookings from locals who used the property for photography shoots etc which we previously disallowed.
India disallowed flights from March 20 and went into total lockdown(Hope you understand what a lockdown is) from March 21st. But from March 1st itself as mentioned, travel had drastically got effected.
Airbnb did not help matters in anyway by allowing 100% refunds towards guests without consulting hosts.
My questions are…
Is Airbnb USA, where all the management sits, aware of what is happening in other countries or is it going by the lockdown period of what is happening in the USA only.
Because if it was aware, the quarter of Jan to Mar 2020 should be waived off as it was a period of extraordinary once-in-a-century circumstances.
If my listing had a competitive March period we could have easily got much more better ratings in this period.
The same would apply to the quarter of April 2020 to June 2020 because the lockdown extends to April 14 and might be prolonged.
I hope these questions are answered by somebody senior and up the ladder because I am quite tired of hosts and hosts from other countries being taken for granted.
I qualified again, it wasn’t hard at all to meet the criteria for the first quarter even though I didn’t even host during most of Feb.
It’s the next quarters that are going to need to be affected. None of us know yet what they will do but I don’t think evaluating the SH program will be high on their list of priorities. They have laid off thousands, lost billions in company value, lost millions in revenue this quarter alone and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
I don’t understand this comment. The Superhost rating criteria is for the previous 365 days of reviews, not for the previous quarter.
Airbnb waived both the 10 stays or 100 days and the 1% cancellation rate requirement for the January-March 2020 assessment. Both are relevant to the COVID-19 cancellation problems. The other criteria, Ratings and response rates, are not.
That is right @RiverRock. We were always a SuperHost from inception. And because of cancellations in March, we could not get past a bad review in February.
In my opinion, Superhost appraisals should either be cancelled or be region specific for Jan - Mar. I mean, imagine a Chinese host being reviewed for the Jan - Mar appraisal. I am sure they were excluded. So should be the case for other countries, if they were similarly effected.
Straightforward logic which Airbnb does not seem to understand or maybe too busy to understand.
I don’t understand your point. Superhosts are evaluated every quarter based on their performance for the previous 4 quarters. If you failed to meet Superhost criteria due to your rating, it means your average rating over the past 365 days (April 1 2019 - March 31, 2020) was less than 4.8. You can see it under Progress–>Opportunities–>Superhost
But you have no way of knowing if just because you would have been able to keep those bookings that were cancelled, that they would necessarily have resulted in bringing your rating up. The guests could have left 4* reviews, and that wouldn’t have helped at all.
If they just did away with the assessment and let everyone keep their status from the previous quarter, then it wouldn’t be fair to hosts that really earned it or to hosts that really deserve to lose it.
Moreover, if they also waived Superhost rating criteria along with cancellations and number of stays, pretty much every host would “earn” Superhost.
I’m still not sure you understand how it works. There isn’t a Jan-Mar appraisal. There is a Apr 2019-March 2020 appraisal. For a Chinese host that likely did not host any reservations at all from Jan-Mar, the superhost status wouldn’t change. If the host managed to get a host couple of reservations during that time, then they would be counted along with Apr-Dec statistics.
AirBnB could have easily taken away my SuperHost status (and lots of others) because Florida has taken away my ability to host–not that I would anyway.
With everything going on and two family members not feeling well, whether or not I have Super Host status is not a concern.
I contacted AirBnB when I received the notice saying I had maintained my status and thanked them–that was one positive note in an otherwise gloomy new year. They could have gone the other way and taken away that rating! Would that have been more appropriate?
As noted in another topic, several of my guests, who I canceled have since asked if they could book for the summer. I asked them to contact me when the pandemic is over–and have their emails so I can contact them when I reopen.
That is my situation. I decided to adjust my attitude because STR seems trivial in the face of a global crisis.
I commiserate with you, @purpledoor , but I don’t think AirBnB will reply. I’ve tweeted AirBnB Help and contacted CS a few times about the matter since early March, and haven’t received a reply.
Although I don’t doubt AirBnb has marginalized non-US-based hosts in other instances, I’m not sure how your location is relevant here. Here is my sob story. I’m in Seattle, Washington, USA, and the US outbreak was first identified here at the end of February. Turns out it had been quietly spreading here for six weeks. We started having mass cancellations at the end of February. I’d been closed in February to do some renovations during the slow season. My annual average was at 4.76 (my lifetime average is 4.83) because I got two 3-star reviews over the past year. One rating was deserved but the other was simple retaliation for enforcing my house rules. I was confident I’d build my reviews back up in March, when business normally starts to pick up and I’d debut the improvements I’d made to my unit.
In early March I thought about taking a few 1-night reservations to bring my rating back up, but other hosts were slashing their prices and predictably reporting poor guest behavior (parties, drug-use). I decided the SH badge wasn’t worth it to me and closed down indefinitely. It sucks because I’d just put several thousand US dollars into improving my listing, but instead I’ve been trying to count my blessings. My family is healthy. My spouse and I are still employed. I can still afford to pay my mortgage. We are better off than most.
Once again, I feel for you, being in the same situation. However, right now AirBnB no longer feels relevant to my immediate life, which is focused on taking care of my family and doing my part to “flatten the curve.”
@BrianR170@muddy , Not sure how SuperHost is evalauted elsewhere. For my listing, the evaluation is quarterly. The email sent by Airbnb and Customer Service clearly acknowledges this.
As far as new reviews for new bookings getting you past the 4.8 score is concerned…
Probability wise, you have a chance of 50% to get a good review versus a bad. Our track record for every quarter shows that we have been a Superhost. So both simple math and probability tell you that we had a good chance to attain Superhost and thus should not get dinged. In criminal law, even when there is a 1% chance of someone being proved innocent, he gets the chance to prove his innocence. And that is why, the appraisal could have been waived or the methodology changed. And it’s not a disservice for other hosts. You are making sure everyone gets judged on a level playing field.
@kaiserdr Good to know about the status. And hoping your family members get better…
@Xena Totally agree That this Superhost thing right now is superfluous. But since Airbnb went ahead with it, I thought they should be aware of the concerns. As of now, Customer Service says they have escalated it. Lets see…
I have a good friend who works in Microsoft in Seattle. So I understand what’s happening there. Pls try to stay safe.
I got an identical email. We were assessed on the last year, but have “dropped” in the last three months since the Jan 1 assessment. The email’s wording creates confusion, but under your performance tab you can see your metrics for the last year.
I hope you get a desirable outcome from the escalation and that you are doing well in India.
Fortunately, here in Seattle, the early cancellations of everything may have a positive outcome. Our hospitals are busy but not yet overrun. According to New York Times, Seattle’s deaths are doubling every 11 days, as opposed to New York City every 3 days.
It’s evaluated exactly the same everywhere. The evaluation is made quarterly, but it based on the previous 365 days of activity, as I and others have tried to explain. Your April1st assessment was based on all your ratings and other criteria since March 31, 2019.
I am responding here to the topic of Superhost status in general, not for any particular period.
I have bitten my tongue from saying this the first hundred or so times I saw questions or complaints on this forum from people who have lost Superhost status for the most recent period (for whatever reason) and from people who are worried about losing future Superhost status due to Covid-19.
I have to say this: Please keep some perspective. Superhost status won’t matter a hill of beans, if we as a world (and the US as a nation) are facing what I think we’re facing.
We have no way to know what will happen with the travel industry. It could take years to recover after this pandemic.
And we have no way to know what’ll happen with Airbnb, whether it will persist, stay in business but change all its rules, be sold, be absorbed, or die out all together. Our mountains of reviews and our Superhost status may seem critical to us now. But in the light of what could be grave economic failure and hundreds of thousands or millions of deaths, our reviews and our Superhost-ness won’t matter at all.
We were all once new to Airbnb and to STR. If it’s a business model that seems viable in the future, and if we have to start over without reviews and our blessed Superhost status, so be it.
If we’re still alive and able to make that decision, we will have won a great deal more than the Airbnb niceties we might have lost.
