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I’m on Airbnb since late 2016, running my property with the help of my partner.
I was having my airbnb account managed by my partner, with my username and password. Full confidence. As I don’t live in the city my airbnb property is, I was only checking the financial reports once per each couple of months or so.
In June this year I had a quarrel with my partner. After that he silently deleted all bookings, as well as my two listings. Made a listing of two my apartments on his account.
Once I figured out what had happened (it took me several weeks), I rushed back, and regained access to my property.
I’ve contacted Airbnb support team, they’ve restored my listings (not bookings, obviously), and cleared up my calender (since the dates for the cancelled bookings normally remain closed).
After that I’ve brushed up my long neglected apartments and tried to restore the functionality of this business.
However, it seems that Airbnb is penalizing my account for this incident. My listings are open for two weeks now, no bookings have been made.
My average occupation rate used to be about 70%. I have about 70 user feedbacks on every listing, with overal rating of 4.5.
So this lack of bookings make no sense to me.
I’ve contacted the Airbnb support team one more time and asked them this question. They’ve reassured me there is no penalizing of my account.
According to the freshly made listing on the account of my partner for these two apartments, during these several weeks, he managed to get the occupation rate of about 75-80%.
I can’t understand what’s wrong here.
I have three options, as I see it:
Keep struggling with this account.
Make another blank new account, leaving everything behind.
I can use my mother’s account, she had some listings two years ago, no cancellations, everything in order.
a short follow-up.
My goal is to obtain the Superhost status.
Right now, with 17% rate of cancelled bookings, it’s obviously impossible.
If I’m choosing options 2 or 3, how soon will I be able to become SH?
It is a harsh lesson to learn about the importance of not leaving your business unmonitored but I am glad you now have things back under your control.
It is not clear from your post. Is your account showing as have a number of cancelled booking? If so, that is likely to account for the fact that people are reluctant to book with you. If so, have you asked Airbnb to remove the cancellation notices.
It is against Airbnb’s terms to make a new account as you are only allowed one, if they find out, they can ban you from the platform completely.
If you want to lose your history of reviews, you could look at setting them up under your mother’s account and she can add you as a co-host.
Personally I would always prefer to have my listings, under my own control, under my own account.
No-one can tell you how long it will take you to get superhost status, it depends on how many bookings you get and ratings for those bookings.
What you have to do is put yourself in Airbnb’s shoes.
What they want is for guests to find and book a great place to stay easily and quickly. They want those guests to be happy so that they’ll use Airbnb again and again.
Now their CS reps differ greatly in quality and brainpower. It’s possible that, when you explained the situation, the person you spoke to thought “this person isn’t a host. This person is pretty ditzy if she lets her boyfriend run her listing and only checks once every few months and lives in another city. I think that many guests wouldn’t want to be hosted by someone like that as it’s all so flaky and uncertain”.
Looking at it 100% totally and honestly from a business point of view Airbnb hasn’t seen any evidence that you (as opposed to your co host or boyfriend) are a good host and a good bet to direct potential guests towards.
So it’s not that they are penalising your account, your listings just aren’t a priority to them.
You can take charge of your listings, promote them yourself and demonstrate that you really are a great host. Then you might earn superhost status.
If you are running a 4.5 star operation you can’t attain SH since that requires 4.8. To be blunt, make sure you fix the problems that caused the low ratings to begin with and SH will take care of itself. As Helsi said, it’s a percentage so there is no way to tell someone how soon they will achieve the goal. I suggest booking as many bookings as you can as quickly as you can and providing a stellar, 5 star stay to each of them. Set your max stay to the shortest you can manage. I do a lot of one night stays and love them but you might need 2 or 3 nights. Don’t let someone book up two weeks and then there’s a chance they don’t review you.
Or I’d see if I could convince Airbnb to let me start over. If you have evidence of the co-host’s mismanagement or any kind of court decrees that would help. Taking over your mom’s account seems dishonest to me.
I don’t think you are being “penalized.” Multiple people report here that if you block your listing for awhile or snooze it it takes time to build back up. After I go on vacation or block off for a direct pay guest it always seems slow for awhile. But once I start booking in people and the reviews start rolling in, so do the reservations.
Delete your current account, if possible, and start fresh. It’s a new beginning. On the bright side, since it will be a new listing, you will get the boost to the top of the page.
For sure those cancellation notices bring you down . I as a guest would never book with someine who has so many cancellations. .
I w0uld start all over again or use your mother account .
Plus 4.5 is not that perfect of a score anyway
If I saw you had a 17% cancellation rate I wouldn’t book with you either I am afraid.
You may rather leave your account behind but I think you will struggle, as I said if Airbnb see you are creating a duplicate account, they may ban you.
Much better for you to ask them to wipe out the cancellation notices and list with other listing companies used by your target market.
The Airbnb support refused to wipe out those cancellation notices.
So I’m starting over.
I’m actually considering two options:
My wife’s account. We normally use this one to book as guests. There’s about 50 stays as guest on this account. As a host there were never any listings.
My mother’s account. There were a couple of listings on this account about 2 years ago, then nothing. She used it several times to book as guest. I can’t remember the exact rating, should be approx. 4.6.
All other things being equal, what would be the best option to choose under my circumstances?
