muddy, you are being logical. This is what I asked the airbnb ambassador, and she said “the host is part of the equation” not just the property. It seems the phone agents are not always up on the policy. One ambassador had not even heard of Guest Favorites.
I’m wondering if returning guest frequency is part of the algo? If a guest returns doesn’t that mean the airbnb is a ‘favorite’?
I hope not because most of my returning guests book direct.
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Here it means that I didn’t like or trust the guest enough to turn them into a direct booking yet.
edit to add: @jaquo … great minds…
Favorite can mean more than one thing. I have a few “favorite” Airbnbs that I haven’t been able to return to but I’d like to.
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I wonder what percentage of hosts actually have returning guests. I’ve only had one since I started hosting in 2016. And that only in the past year. And I booked her direct the 2nd two times.
My guests don’t come to visit family, or work, they come to have a beach vacation, and most are seasoned travelers. They like to check out new areas on subsequent trips. My repeat guest is so because she is getting her dental work done here. Also she used to live here- she knows lots of people in town.
It’s usually pointless to ask the CS reps about things like that. Some of them don’t even know policies that have been in place forever, let alone some new feature, and often give out erroneous information. Also, the new updates are still in “Early Release” mode, which is code for “We’re still trying to figure it out”. For instance, the official update says Guest Favorites is for properties with 4.9+ ratings, but hosts here have said they are seeing it on listings with lower ratings than that.
MOST of my guests are returning. I am close to a financial center - and NYC - and I prefer them doing this thru airbnb. Happily, NYC has made illegal to do strs in many buildings, and so I am getting many bookings as I am a 35 min train ride from midtown NYC., too.
I am interested to see if that has any effect on my listing… after all I have to be highly rated if they are taking this into consideration, right?
The reason I peruse the Airbnb CC forum is that updates are often explained there.
Today I read there that the 4.9 rating is an “average” for Guest Favorites- there will be some listings with a higher than 4.9 and some with a lower rating. That’s why we are seeing listings at 4.7 in that category.
Also, I am sure that ‘built in’ is allowing for the ‘sparse area’ algo that puts places 20 miles away right next to something close to what the guest is searching for (because airbnb always wants to show massive amounts of places available) so might spread the joy around so that there might be a specific percentage of these shown to a guest.
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I get very few return guests and I made the Favorite Guests Place (or whatever it’s called.)
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I recently convinced customer service to remove a bad review which dumped on us for location (one star for location!) as the challenges of driving in the mountains, which she was complaining about , are well-disclosed multiple times in the listing.
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