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Hi @Elizabeth,
Interesting notion. But then going forward you have to (a) keep some dates blank or (b) explain why the construction mysteriously disappeared or © book someone else without mentioning the construction and hope nobody notices. Of course, it’s probable nobody will notice. I’m sure nobody at Airbnb keeps track of such things.
I thought I was going to lose my super host status but on my phone app, I already see I’ve retained it for this quarter. What a surprise! Yet my bookings are lower than ever. I blame that on over saturation.
I would say maintaining the 5 Star Rating. That’s tough.
None for me thank goodness. 
I don’t need the extra pressure. They already expect too much.
Guests being cancelled on, often last minute, is The Biggest Problem for airbnb I’m guessing. If you look at any of the sites criticising airbnb (trustpilot, for example) almost all the complaints are about hosts cancelling. I’ve taken in guests last-minute because some flakey host decided they couldn’t be bothered to host that weekend after all. I’ve been cancelled on as a guest and I can tell you it’s a not good, particularly when you have careful plans, got your visa etc. Personally I think it’s a good thing to improve the quality of the platform. How can guests trust it if a host can just cancel on a whim?? So yeah, I think it’s fair that hosts don’t get to cancel unpunished unless it’s truly exceptional circumstances. You should have detected that the guest is an ‘exhausting nutcase’ BEFORE they booked and declined them. If you have IB, well you gotta suck it up 
Night before last I had a perfectly fine young guest who effusively thanked me for “making this so easy.” This is an unusual comment so I said “really? How so?” She’d been cancelled on, not turned down, but cancelled on by three hosts for this weekend. She instant booked with me and is only 22 years old and by her own description, “is a little different looking.” Being young and of optimistic nature she felt that she would find a place to stay and wasn’t too concerned. But if it happens to older people they are going to opt out.
Considering the number of hosts on Airbnb, ( https://www.quora.com/How-many-hosts-are-there-on-Airbnb ), and the fact that many of them are actual house-sharing hosts, I think it may be reasonable to expect a certain percentage of cancellations. Life happens. Host break arms or legs, fracture ribs, kids get really sick, plumbing or electrical goes awry, previous guest left so much damage host requires professional services to fix it (happened to me once!). I don’t consider all ABB hosts who cancel to be flaky at all, rather it’s the chance you willingly take when participating in the sharing economy meaning real people who are actually hosting. It’s part of what sometimes happens. Of course, if you are dealing with an ABB host who has so many listings that there is property management system in place, that’s a different story, cause they are just going to pay someone to cover the 3-11 shift. Then again, same type of thing could happen could happen if you book a cruise on Royal Caribbean—boat has to come back to shore because everyone is ill, next cruise can’t happen until the cause is determined.
We are with you! Mainly because Air doesn’t offer SH to Barcelona hosts bc of the ongoing legal battles.
For sure. The things you mention are extenuating circumstances. Rare, but they do happen. I was thinking about the attitude that was prevalent a few years ago where hosts would cancel simply because they changed their mind, decided to go away for the weekend, have friends to stay instead, or whatever. Air has cracked down on that severely and I think that’s a good thing, personally. Flaky hosts bring down the reputation of everyone. There’s also the silly paranoid hosts who seem determined to make life difficult, I just read the other day on the Community Centre that a host was going to cancel because the guest had told her he would b using a different cell phone to the one that was verified on his account. I mean, really??
Burner phones are real, as are temporary phone numbers to sign up for membership on a website. And most reasons for having a burner phone or using a temporary phone just aren’t cool with me when I’m deciding whether to let a guest stay in my home or not.
Many hosts are, by this stage of forced non-cancelling/Instant Booking/Mother-In-Law dying-cancellations from guests 8 hours prior to arrival leading to a full refund to the guest, are suffering from Host-Shock-Syndrome, lets just call HSS for brevity, so yeah, I can totally see some hosts going overboard by a sudden change of supposed verifiable identifiable information.
I didn’t cancel, but once did have a guest stay…did not arrive within 3 hours of his stated time of arrival, calls to cell phone number that were ‘verified’ by ABB went to a number that was “not in service”. Said guest was not someone I’d ever want to host again.
I’m a person who lives alone, sharing my home to people for $50/night, so yeah, actually, that would raise alarm bells for me. Who changes their cell phone number in this day and age? I’ve had the same cell number for about 15 years!
Its very common when people leave the US and don’t want to continue to pay for their mobile provider while they are living abroad. We also have different numbers for different countries, as in replacing SIM cards when traveling, etc.
True, I’ve lived a boring life in the same 100 mile radius the past 15 years. But if I’m going to allow you to enter my home, walk on my carpet, sleep on my bed with my pillows, wake up extra early to take my shower so I can make sure you have plenty of hot water, allow you to use my appliances…I deserve to have the courtesy of knowing the phone number where I can actually reach you.
I completely agree… I was just making the point that if a guest’s phone number doesn’t match the verified one it doesn’t have to be a red flag.We have had many guests whose legit phones didn’t work while they were traveling abroad, to us.
You took the most outrageous examples to make your case for host to never to be able to cancel a booking. The essence of this conversation however was about loosing SH status for a full year because of a single cancellation, not about hosts that are nothing but flakes. I agree, capricious cancelling, especially the night before anyone’s arrival, of course would be a very cruel thing to do and amazingly bad business for AirBnB.
Like I have said before ~on the relationship of cancelling and maintaining SH status~ (only), I would make it that hosts are allowed to cancel 1/25 booking or better yet once per year, without penalty, but never closer than 60 days before a scheduled arrival. This gives the host the option to cancel a guest that promises to be or is developing into a potential problem, discovered well after they booked. It matches the option the guest has of cancelling on the host well ahead of time also and still receive a full refund, but only minus a booking fee. My guests are booked 1.5 years in advance actually, after much exchange, and I do not use IB, which would be totally counter productive in my particular case.
As for the true hosting flakes, I am at a total loss as to what their punishment should be, beyond being burned at the stake.
Hi @Mearns,
My understanding is that cancellations due to extenuating circumstances (as determined by Airbnb) don’t cause loss of SH status. Is that correct? How to become a Superhost - Airbnb Help Centre says
Cancellations you make under extenuating circumstances won’t count against your Superhost status
But of course, not everything one reads in Airbnb documentation is necessarily true.
Hi faheem.
That is an option, and good that it is there. What I was thinking is a method along the lines that one doesn’t even have to bother calling AirBnB, who I hesitate to call (and never have) because I think they got better things to do than waste time evaluating my suspicions.
And there it is…the little badge. I made Superhost! Will keep you posted if I see a difference in bookings or people’s attitudes. I wonder how long I’ll be able to hang on to it. Not going to get too attached!
Me too! Hope the telephone number is better! The only thing I care about lol
I got my $100 travel credit. That’s all I care about. LOL. Actually I do care about having it and after having it all this time it would bug me if I lost it.