In a crowded Airbnb market, standing out is the key to higher occupancy rates. Enter the realm of Airbnb Superhosts – the elite performers who enjoy enhanced visibility, boosted earnings, exclusive rewards, and unparalleled recognition. Discover how achieving Superhost status can skyrocket your occupancy and revenue in today's competitive landscape.
Superhosts are top performers on Airbnb, and many perks come with this recognition, including more visibility, increased earning potential, access to exclusive rewards, and special recognition that can all lead to maximized occupancy and revenue.
Attaining Superhost status on Airbnb is within your reach – even if you are a new Airbnb host. Follow these steps to maximize your chances of earning this esteemed host status.
What Is an Airbnb Superhost?
Superhosts on Airbnb are basically their top performers. This program was created to reward outstanding hosts, and hosts need to go above and beyond to provide consistently amazing stays for their guests.
Airbnb evaluates your hosting performance quarterly for the past 12 months, and this includes all listings on your account – note that you didn’t have to host for the entire 12 months to qualify. Superhost status does not take tenure into consideration. Each quarterly assessment is a 5-day period beginning on January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, and October 1st.
If you meet the program requirements by the assessment date, you’ll automatically become a Superhost—no need to apply. Airbnb will notify you of your status at the end of each assessment period, and it usually takes about a week for the badge to show up on your profile.
Airbnb Superhost Requirements
Superhost requirements are more than reachable and most experienced hosts already check off the requirements. Here is what you need to do according to Airbnb:
- Complete at least 10 trips or 3 reservations that total at least 100 nights
- Maintain a 90% response rate or higher
- Maintain a less than 1% cancellation rate, with exceptions made for those that fall under Airbnb’s Extenuating Circumstances policy
- Maintain a 4.8 overall rating (A review counts towards Superhost status when either both the guest and the Host have submitted a review, or the 14-day window for reviews is over, whichever comes first).
Once you’ve met Superhost status, you can even track how you’re doing for these requirements to ensure that your account stays in good standing. In the Airbnb platform, just go to “Superhost” under Performance.
Tips to Get Superhost Status
1. Carefully Consider Any Host Cancellation: Being a reliable host is paramount to becoming an Airbnb Superhost, and it could affect your search rankings results too. Airbnb prioritizes hosts that are reliable (i.e. do not cancel bookings often) and who are open to taking bookings. You should already be tracking your cancellations to ensure that you are not below that 1% threshold, but this is a win-win for your journey to becoming a Superhost: A cancellation rate under 1% could help your property show up in more searches and get booked more often, helping you to also meet the reservation threshold.
2. Keep those reviews positive: Trust is at the core of the Airbnb community, and the primary police force of that trust is reviews. There is no secret solution to guaranteeing perfect 5-star reviews for every guest you have, but it is important to pay attention to categories you might not be scoring well in. Reassess negative reviews you’ve seen in the past and try to identify exactly why you may not be receiving perfect scores in.
3. Know that your response rates are crucial: Your response rate, or the time it takes you to respond to a guest message on Airbnb, is important to track as it is just one of the ways that Airbnb’s algorithm determines your search result position. Maintaining a high response rate (at least 90%) is ideal – and even allows you to use other host features on the platform, like Instant Book, another feature that will improve your ranking. And just like keeping your cancellation rate low, maintaining a high response rate can help you get booked more often by showing your listings higher up in search results.
Why Do I Want Superhost Status?
Gaining and maintaining Superhost status has its perks for hosts. Besides having the street cred of being an outstanding host, this status will help attract guests to book your listings. Guests know and trust Superhosts to provide reliable, outstanding stays. This will therefore maximizing occupancy, but there are other specific perks as well:
- More visibility and earning potential
- Special recognition in the form of a profile badge on your Airbnb listings and profile.
- Access exclusive rewards, such as a $100 Airbnb coupon every year that you keep your status and an extra 20% on top of the usual host referral bonus.
The perks that come with Superhost status are great, but we know most hosts focus on one major category when it comes to their Airbnb hosting: revenue.
Superhost status can help with that too because your unit will appear more often in Airbnb’s search and guests are statistically more attracted to Superhosts because of the additional trust associated with that status.
As you strive to attain Superhost status, you should also consider pricing your unit dynamically to ensure you are maximizing both occupancy and revenue from your Airbnb. As the best Airbnb pricing tool and an alternative to Smart Pricing on Airbnb, Beyond can help you with this by automatically pushing price recommendations to your Airbnb calendar on a daily basis.