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I’ve been doing my research in my area and there are roughly 150 or so similar listings to me (can take over 2 people, most are “whole house”). When I turn on the IB filter it drops to 25-50 most weekends, and then when I turn on the SH filter as well it drops to like 5-10 places. Even when searching for only 2 people (which is of course preferred by me!), it still is only like 15 “whole house” places, so still great!
So getting SH will be huge for me, especially off season as anyone who uses those filters will see that I’m like 30% cheaper than the cheapest of those places. There are of course other factors as most of those places are in the city and I’m suburban (though still great for vacation/site-seeing) and my place is above a garage and almost 100 years old and a lot of these are fancy apartments or actually a whole house, hence why I’m 30-300% cheaper than these places.
BUT, I have a great clean place and have 89% 5-star reviews and the only 4 stars I have are under “Cleanliness”- because it’s an old building that needs to be upgraded due to old materials. Kinda stinks, but obviously cabinets from the 50s don’t look as those recently remodeled. I can live with that. And we’re planning to redo those eventually and then I can charge more!
But back to my main concern: Has anyone seen a change in their guests and reviews after getting SH? Of course I’d like to maintain it as it would give me a huge search boost. And I’m planning to stay exactly the same since I know what I offer I’m not raising my prices until I do actual upgrades, etc. My main concern goes along with what @konacoconutz has commented on why she doesn’t care for SH in that it may make unrealistic expectations with future guests and therefore bring future reviews down.
I’m 100% on accuracy. My reviews support that too and only “complain” about things I fully disclose, haha. I show pictures of the steps people have to use to access the apartment. I show clear pictures of everything and caption them. I just know people tend not to read and am mainly concerned that someone’s going to go cheap and filter SH and expect a fully upgraded space and then be disappointed because they don’t read or look at pictures.
You don’t need to worry. We’ve been Superhosts for a while now. We have not seen any change in our ratings, our reviews, or the pickiness of our guests.
I’m in agreement with @konacoconutz on this. We’ve been Super Hosts most of the time we’ve been hosting. But it goes back and forth. Once we reach Super Host status, our ratings gradually trend downward afterwards. And once we lose it, they trend back upwards until we get it again!
I think when you’re a super host you do get a few more picky people than usual. Think about it… picky people want the best and they want to minimize all risks. So they’re probably going to filter on SHs and only choose SHs. So they’ll arrive with grand expectations. They’ll feel like nothing can go wrong because after all they’re with a SUPER HOST! And when one little thing does go wrong - you’re not getting a 5-star review from them.
When we don’t have SH status, most of our guests seem very happy to put up with just about anything. We had a guest just last week and out of the blue - a mouse runs through her room! She was understandably freaked out - as were we. But you know what? She left a great review and didn’t mention the mouse. In her private comment she wrote “Despite Mickey Mouse running through, we loved your place!” And she commented to us before she left that she knew we didn’t have a mouse because our place was dirty - she could see it is spotlessly clean. So she didn’t blame us for it.
But I guarantee you if she had booked because we were SHs and she wanted to make sure she didn’t encounter any problems at all - she would have been pissed and surely she would have made it known in her review.
I didn’t notice a difference in reviews. I hosted for about 9 months, and stayed around 80-85% five stars the whole time. I did notice an increase in reservations after I got SH, even though I raised my prices, but that may be because I hit SH in April, and that is when tourism picks up in my city.
I know other hosts have had increased guest expectations, but that hasn’t been my personal experience.
No. The only change that I’ve seen is getting a bit faster, more respectful Customer Service help. I don’t think guests are really aware of what a Superhost is, nor do they really care.
FWIW, Superhost status and $5 will get you a mediocre cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Lol, just had my first ever Mickey experience in my life (it ran through my son’s room and I was signaling to him to shut up so the guests didn’t hear!), next night a burglar tries to break in (omg another first) but the guests were cool, only negative feedback, they wanted a tv for the room lol. Still got 5 stars. Maybe they expected it as I’m a superhost. He he
