I had to cancel a last minute booking when I realised I already had a direct booking. I paid a fine at the time. This has only happened once in 9 years, but because I get less than 100 bookings a year it has lead to loss of Superhost status. I don’t care about the silly badge but I assume it will affect where I come in search rankings. And sit there for 12 months till the cancelled booking is more than a year old. Is there any point appealing this or is it all “Computer Says No” these days? I presume the old “3 cancellations a year and you are still good” has gone.
Based on what I read about search ranking on Airbnb website, your search ranking is not based on super host.
Even if you qualified for super host you would still have a lower search ranking because of teg cancellation. But the effect of the cancellation will go down over time.
Super host was useful because guests could filter by super host.
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I can only tell you my experience, but I have also read posts by other hosts saying the same thing.
I lost my Superhost status, which I had had for years, after I closed to bookings for 2 years during the height of Covid, as I homeshare and share my kitchen with guests.
Airbnb waived the “number of stays” requirement for the first year of Covid, but reinstituted it after that. (Which gives you a clue as to how much they actually cared about guest and host safety, despite all their over-the-top Covid cleaning protocol. They at least should have made an exception for homeshare hosts who share common areas with guests)
So when I started hosting again, I no longer was a Superhost. It made no difference to my booking rate. In fact, I got more bookings that season than I had ever had before. Maybe a newish host with few reviews would find Superhost helpful, but if you have pages full of great reviews and a 5* rating, or close to that, it doesn’t appear to matter.
Superhost is supposed to one of the factors affecting search ranking, but I don’t think it counts much compared to other factors, like using IB, being a “popular” listing, having slick pro photos, etc. etc.
And since Airbnb no longer has a Superhost filter nor puts it on the listings in initial search, guests have to actually click on an individual listing to see if you’re a Superhost.
In other words, don’t worry about it. And even if you were eligible for 3 free cancellations a year, they aren’t going to accept “I had a direct booking I forgot to block the dates for” as qualifying, so I wouldn’t waste my time on it.
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Thanks for confirming about search rankings. This was the only thing I cared about. And it sticking around for 12 months, as I get less than 100 bookings a year. I should add I spoke to a CSR and they not only got the Superhost status put back but reversed the “allegation” (their words) of the cancellation and was refunded the penalty. So they’ll be getting a great review and rating too.
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That’s great. I also lost my Superhost status for a hot minute because I cancelled a reservation minutes after it was made. The reason was my Airbnb calendar was unblocking days that I had blocked and it was happening more than once, enought that over days I could show the CSR. So they reversed it all…fees and loss of status. I’m afraid to say that is still happening and so I have to watch my calendar closely. 
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Good to hear that CS reversed the penalties for some hosts. When I advise other hosts not to waste their time on something with CS, I don’t mean not to try. I mean the scenarios where hosts spend hours on the phone with CS, call them 3 times a day for weeks, or exchange 30 messages with them trying to get them to reverse some decision.
At some point you have to assess how much your time and aggravation level is worth compared to whatever benefit you perceive in a reversal.
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That’s scary. I wonder if this bug could be ‘fixed’ if, in our case, we would block dates on BDC which synchronises calendars with ABB, obviously. In that case ABB shouldn’t be able to unblock the date if it was set up on another platform.
Please don’t tell me that you tested this and that it is still an issue 
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