I’m almost 2 years into hosting and I’ve been a Superhost most of the time. This summer, I’ve had a lot of cancellations, mostly people saying their travel plans changed. Fine with me, whatever. But then I got a message from AirBnB that I’ve lost my Superhost status due to my guest cancellation rate. What? I don’t have any control over that and I don’t see why it is a reflection on my rental. What are other hosts’ thoughts about this?
Probably lost it due to minimum stays required to keep it in a time frame….but who knows with Airbnb
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Guest generated cancellations should have nothing to do with the cancellation rate for Superhost, which only count host initiated cancellations. Are you sure you haven’t misunderstood?
What are your stats in all the Supethost criteria?
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I think it’s because it freed up those days on your calendar unless those days get rebooked. The criteria for superhosts includes X amount of stays. Try to get those dates rebooked by offering a discount to keep your superhost status. For example: 10% off if guests book a week.
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Another way to look at this is to ask yourself why you get so many cancellations. We all do, of course, from time to time, but if your cancellations are so very numerous, it might be really helpful to understand why.
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Superhost status is not a reflection on your rental. It is a carrot Airbnb dangles to keep hosts stressed out about losing that designation, letting guests get away with poor behavior in terror of a bad review. If it was a reflection of your hosting prowess, Airbnb wouldn’t refuse to remove obviously retaliatory ratings, claiming “it’s a reflection of the guest’s experience”, when said guest left a 1* review, claiming the place was filthy and unmaintained, for a Superhost with hundreds of 5 star reviews saying the exact opposite.
I lost the Superhost status I’d had for years when I closed my homeshare listing to bookings during the height of Covid, to keep myself and my guests safe, resulting in not enough bookings to keep Superhost. That certainly wasn’t “a reflection on my rental”- it was just Airbnb punishing me for not providing them with service fees for a year and a half.
Nor is the number of bookings per year a reflection of one’s hosting abilities, because the number of bookings one gets is dependent on many factors, such as one’s viable booking season, how much competition you have, how long guests book for, etc. A host who gets lots of 1-3 night bookings in an area with year-round business and little competition, and multiple listings may end up with a hundreds of bookings a year, while a host who lives where there is a definite on and off season, with tons of competition, who only has one listing and who accept bookings that are months long, may not be able to meet the number of stays requirement.
The loss of Superhost had no bearing whatsoever on my bookings, in fact, I got more bookings after I reopened than I had ever had before.
And Airbnb removed the Superhost filter when they came up with “Guest Favorite”, so guests can’t even search for Superhosts to book with.
The only perk to Superhost is the $100 travel voucher you get once a year, and many hosts,like me, never even end up using it.
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I agree that Superhost is a ‘gold star’ infant school craziness that means nothing.
Over the years, I’ve spoken to guests about why they’ve chosen our apartments. No one, EVER, has said because I’m a Superhost. It’s just an Airbnb carrot that hosts fall for.
If I were getting many cancellations, I think I’d keep a spreadsheet showing the date of cancellation, date of booking, (difference between the two), cancellation policy at the time, and any outside factors (bad weather forecasts etc.) , reasons given, refunds requested, refunds given, etc, etc, etc, so that I could get a good picture of the situation.
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I have read posts from guests who say they always try to book with Superhosts, but those are usually guests who’ve been using Airbnb for many years, from back when Superhost actually sort of meant something, because the customer service used to be very helpful to hosts in the early years, and would have been more likely to remove an obvious retaliation review. And the platform wasn’t loaded with property managers with hundreds of listings who seem to be able to retain Superhost in spite of a lot of bad reviews.
Nowdays I seem to read more guest posts along the lines of “I don’t know how this host can be a Superhost- the place wasn’t clean, the sheets and towels were stained, there was only one roll of toilet paper for a 4 person booking and an empty soap dispenser, and while the host said they’d send someone over to do a better job cleaning and bring supplies, no one ever showed up”.
In any case, as long as a host is getting enough bookings, from hassle-free guests, a Superhost badge pasted over your profile photo doesn’t matter a whit. I think most guests book on the basis of location, price and the photos and maybe good written reviews. All the Airbnb gimmicks like Superhost, Guest Favorite, Rare Find, probably don’t count for much aside from maybe affecting your search ranking, so you are more visible.
One host, whose listing is a private atoll in Belize, but not luxury fancy- the buildings are eclectic and somewhat rustic, was rather distressed about regaining Superhost after losing it- he felt it led guests to having higher expectations.
He had a guest who actually complained in her review that “There were 4 of us but there were only 3 matching coffee mugs”. (There were plenty of coffee mugs, they just didn’t all match- meanwhile she’s in an amazing place on a private atoll, where you can walk around naked if you want, with 3 friends, there to supposedly have a unique, fun vacation.)
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Would love a link to the Belize listing - if only to dream!
I don’t have the link, and can’t remember his title, but it shouldn’t be that hard to find. I don’t know the name of the town it is by, but maybe using the categories like “Beach” might narrow the search. There might even be an “Atoll” category, I’m not sure.
The photos would show some rambling sort of wooden structures, painted blue/turquoise, as I recall.
Were you referring to Fred, who used to post here?
I didn’t know he used to post here, but yes, his name is Fred.
It was a long time ago. I think this is his listing.
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Yep, that’s it. He’s been steadily improving it over the years- it used to look a lot more rustic. I remember him saying (on the Airbnb CC) that his sister had come to stay and was either a designer, an artist, or had a flair for that, and without even purchasing anything new, moved things around, reorganized, added some paint here and there, etc., which right away made a big difference.
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Yes, it’s a lot posher now than it used to be. Mind you, it was gorgeous back then too. 
“Are you sure you haven’t misunderstood?”
Thanks, I very well may have misunderstood. I will take a closer look.
I know why people are cancelling, I put that in the original post, so I don’t need a spreadsheet to figure it out. This is a side hustle for me, so my cancellation policy is the most lenient possible - I’m not trying to punish people or make money off guests who don’t end up staying with me. I think I misunderstood which cancellations the Superhost evaluation was referencing, so basically my post is moot lol
There are only four criteria for Superhost- at least an 88% response rate (which means simply answering an Inquiry within 24 hrs or accepting or declining a Request within 24 hrs), a 4.8 or above overall rating, a less than 1% host cancellation rate, and at least 10 bookings in the previous 365 days, or 3 bookings with a combined length of at least 100 nights.
It’s not very complicated. You probably didn’t meet the number of bookings requirement.
And yes, hosts with flexible cancellation policies will get a lot of cancellations. It works for some hosts, even if isn’t just a side gig, because they live right near an airport or something like that, so get a lot of last minute bookings to replace cancelled ones. Otherwise, having a flexible policy and guests cancelling a lot will probably not only affect your Superhost status, because of not getting enough bookings, but will lower your search ranking, so your listing will be harder for guests to find, because the Airbnb search algorithm favors places that get booked a lot.
And I wouldn’t say that people are cancelling because their travel plans changed, it’s sort of the opposite- they are cancelling because you have a flexible policy so they have nothing to lose by not having firm travel plans.
If you had even the moderate policy, as I do, I think you’d find that less guests’ travel plans “changed”.
With a flexible policy, guests can just say “Hey honey, how about we get away for the weekend at the end of the month- I could book an Airbnb in…”
“Sure, that sounds great.”
Then, 2 days before check-in it’s “Oh, Julie is having her baby shower this weekend and I really should go, we’ll have to cancel that Airbnb.”
While there may be unforeseen circumstances that require a guest to cancel, I think giving them the 5 days before check-in for a full refund, as happens with the moderate policy, is plenty generous when a guest has held your calendar hostage to getting other bookings for weeks or months. I don’t feel bad about the $ I get to keep if a guest cancels less than 5 days before check-in. I don’t feel I’m punishing people just because I don’t want to be subject to their whims or flakiness. I also have a life to organize and plan around when I know I am going to have guests. I don’t want to have to turn down a dinner invitation or a weekend trip with friends because I have to prepare for an incoming guest, only to have them cancel last minute.
And I’ve never had a cancelling guest fight me on that, demanding a full refund. If I really believed the guest had a valid reason for having to cancel last minute (I don’t count “change of travel plans” as a valid reason- an accident, a medical crisis, a death in the family, with the guest providing some form of proof, or me having messaged enough with them to trust that they aren’t lying, would be valid reasons to me), I always have the option to give them whatever refund I want.
But if you don’t really care one way or the other (although you did seem to care enough about losing Superhost to post about it), then none of it really matters.
A Strict cancellation policy is one solution. Dont let them cancel. You can get a report to see if having relaxed cancellation policy does anything to booking numbers from pricelabs and the like. Its shows number of places booked with various cancellation policies. You may find having relaxed cancellation does nothing for you.
Thank you. I have changed from flexible to moderate - I’ll see if that makes a difference.
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