What Is Airbnb Superhost Status and Is It Worth The Effort?

Every host in the Airbnb community is aware of the Airbnb Superhost program. It’s a much sought-after title that hosts pursue, hoping to reap the rewards and benefits.

With over 5 million hosts on Airbnb, a Superhost badge adds great credibility to your listing. But how does having Superhost status benefit your business and is this level of hosting performance worth the effort?

Read on to learn everything there is to know about Airbnb Superhost status and how to earn it.

What Is an Airbnb Superhost?

An Airbnb Superhost is an award given to hosts in recognition for consistently good reviews and guest experiences. These are considered the top performing hosts on the platform, offering outstanding hospitality. Superhosts receive an orange badge on their Airbnb listing, which shows that they have achieved it.

How Do I Become a Superhost on Airbnb?

Airbnb selects its Superhosts based on evaluating certain criteria. Hosts will be eligible to join the program once they have hit the following milestones:

• Hosted bookings at least 10 times a year, or 3 reservations with 100 nights booked.
• Maintained a response rate of 90% or higher.
• Maintained an overall rating of 4.8, and 80% of reviews on Airbnb being 5-star reviews.
• Have a cancellation rate of 1% or lower. Keep in mind that Airbnb may make exceptions under its extenuating circumstances policy.

If you manage to meet the criteria when Airbnb performs an assessment, you’ll qualify for a Superhost badge. Airbnb performs these assessments several times a year. So if you don’t qualify on your first try, you’ll always have another chance. Airbnb will review your listing’s performance every 3 months to assess if it still meets the benchmarks for Superhost status.

You can also track your progress towards Superhost status via the Superhost section of your Airbnb dashboard. This area will show your activity over the past year and will also list the date of your next Superhost assessment.

What Are The Airbnb Superhost Requirements?

As indicated by Airbnb’s definition of a Superhost, this status isn’t awarded to simply anyone. There are several targets you need to first hit to become a Superhost. Here are some suggestions to help you along on your journey:

1. Make it comfortable and clean

People who book with you on Airbnb choose your accommodation over a hotel. Thus, you need to provide an experience that rivals what they might find at a hotel. This means providing the amenities that they want most and making sure that your place and everything in it is always in good working order.

Also, hire professional cleaners who will pay close attention to often overlooked areas of your rental. Since it is private property and not a hotel, guests are much less likely to be forgiving if your place isn’t clean to their standards.

As 5-star reviews are essential to achieve Superhost status, you need to provide a perfect stay for your guests and keep your rental sparkling clean.

2. Leave reviews every time

You should always leave Airbnb guest reviews to encourage them to do the same for you. Airbnb requires at least 80% of your guests (over the total stays) to have left you a review to qualify as a Superhost. Your host rating also needs to be at least 4.8 or higher.

3. Keep up prompt and effective communication

Part of the superhost requirements need to keep at least a 90% response rate to messages and should respond within 24 hours of a message being sent. If your response rate is lower than this, you won’t be eligible to become a superhost. Staying on top of messaging can be tough, especially if you have many properties receiving several messages a day.

If you’re struggling to keep track of your messages, an efficient solution is to use automation to create pre-set messages. Using triggered messages and responses can save you a lot of time while ensuring you maintain an excellent response rate.

4. Ensure high occupancy

To earn the status of Superhost, you need to show a high rate of occupancy and host at least ten reservations over a year. Focus your efforts on improving your booking rate to increase your occupancy.

To boost your occupancy rate, you should:

– Be realistic with pricing

Depending on your local housing market, prices may fluctuate during the year. If you want to maximize your bookings while also increasing your profits, you’ll need to be shrewd about your Airbnb pricing.

In order to stay competitive, you should regularly review your competitors’ rates and see how much they match your own. Make any tweaks or adjustments when necessary if your price is far above theirs.

During your high season when your booking rate is at its best, you can increase your rates to maximize your revenue. During your low season, you can offer discounts and special offers to attract more reservations. You can also use the same strategy to attract more bookings during the week.

– Market your property to keep your calendar full

You won’t get very far if you don’t have a target audience in mind when creating your Airbnb listings. Design your listing to appeal to both international and domestic travelers. This can include business travelers and families.

Make use of social media to expand your audience reach as much as possible. Marketing on visual platforms, such as Instagram and Pinterest, is a great way to attract fresh eyes to your listings.

You can also partner with local businesses in your area to offer paired discounts or promotions. From doing this, you get additional exposure from other businesses while offering more exposure for them at the same time.

– Avoid cancellations

If you want to qualify for the Superhost program, you need to have a cancellation rate of >1% (meaning only 1 cancellation for every 100 bookings). It may sound difficult to achieve, but try not to cancel bookings if they don’t fall under Airbnb’s extenuating circumstances.

5. Manage your properties efficiently

It’s all good and well to have ideas for wowing guests, but they won’t go far without effective property management strategies in place. How will you handle incoming and outgoing messages? How will Airbnb check-in be handled? Who will oversee the cleaning and maintenance of the property?

To ensure effective management of your business, iGMS vacation rental software is the ideal solution. iGMS manages your messaging, reviews, listing availability across various platforms, and more. With iGMS overseeing your business tasks and improving your response rate, you’ll be well on your way to achieving Superhost status!

Try iGMS for Free

Is It Worth It to Receive Superhost Status?

Although you should always strive to provide the best possible service, you may wonder if becoming a Superhost is worth the time and effort? Let’s take a look at the data revealed by AirDNA:

• Achieving the status of Superhost doesn’t mean an automatic increase in listing views. On average, hosts who became Airbnb Superhosts only noticed a 5% increase in weekly views of their listings.
• Although Superhosts have a lower average daily rate (ADR) of around 11% compared to regular hosts, they enjoy an 81% higher occupancy rate compared to normal hosts.
• Superhosts also earn 60% more daily revenue than regular hosts.

After analyzing the facts and figures above, it’s easy to see that achieving the Superhost badge won’t lead to an instant increase in revenue. Superhosts are also savvy with their pricing and positioning in the market in order to attract more guests.

By using flexible pricing and maximizing their occupancy instead of rates, they can maintain Superhost status and a competitive edge. Becoming a Superhost won’t automatically mean you earn more, but it’s the first step towards generating greater revenue.

What are the Benefits of Being an Airbnb Superhost?

While becoming an Airbnb Superhost usually means a boost in Airbnb SERP rankings, there are other benefits that you may not be aware of.

• More Bookings

As a Superhost, you’ll be able to receive more bookings. This is because guests will see a Superhost badge on your host profile and each of your listings.

Since guests usually look for the most reliable hosts on Airbnb to rent from, they’ll naturally consider your listings. You’ll also be included in a Superhost search filter that only displays Superhost listings in search results.

• An Increase in Airbnb Income

Another benefit of Airbnb Superhost status is an increase in Airbnb income. Your booking increase will lead to an increase in rental revenue. Having the status of Superhost also enables you to charge a slightly higher rate, due to your reputation for excellent service.

If you are able to maintain your Superhost status for one full year, you’ll receive a $100 travel coupon that you can apply towards your own Airbnb trip.

• Dedicated Support from Airbnb

Being a Superhost means you’ll also get priority support from Airbnb whenever you call or send a tweet to @AirbnbHelp. This can be a tremendous help for your business, allowing you to provide better support to your Airbnb guests.

You’ll become part of Airbnb’s exclusive group with access to new product releases and invitations to events at the company.

While you might not think that obtaining Superhost status is important, it’s clear that it does offer incredible benefits. However, most importantly, it provides assurance that you are doing a great job as a host. This can help relieve any worries you may have about meeting Airbnb’s standards for hosting.

Conclusion

As you can see, becoming an Airbnb Superhost requires a lot of commitment and dedication. But the long-term results and benefits can be well worth the continuous efforts.

Another smart investment for your business is automation. Vacation rental software, such as iGMS, uses automation functionality to run your business on autopilot. iGMS can streamline your daily business operations by:

• Organizing messages into a single feed with a unified inbox
• Improving communication with automated templates and triggered messaging
• Creating and coordinating cleaning tasks with live tracking to completion
• Creating your own direct booking website
• Managing direct bookings using a direct booking management toolkit
• Processing payments securely via integration with Stripe.
• Creating essential reports on your business results within minutes
• Adjusting your pricing in a smart way through integrations with PriceLabs, DPGO, and Wheelhouse
• Automating the process of guest reviews