The four Airbnb Superhost requirements
Airbnb Superhosts are experienced hosts that consistently get good reviews. They stand out from the crowd and their Superhost badge shows that they’re trustworthy and have a high standard for hosting.
You can qualify for Airbnb’s Superhost program by
- Having an overall 4.8+ rating
- Completing at least 10 stays in the past year, or 100 nights over at least three completed stays
- Maintaining at least a 90% response rate
- Consistently having a lower than 1% cancellation rate
You don’t need to apply for this program. Every three months, Airbnb conducts their quarterly analysis and if you meet these requirements, you’ll be notified of your new-found status!
The number one rule of good hosting is excellent communication, which translates to 5-start ratings and glowing reviews.
What are the benefits of the Airbnb Superhost status?
Achieving and maintaining this status can be quite challenging, but it’s not without its unique Superhost benefits. The perks of the Airbnb Superhost status are:
- More visibility
- More trust
- Access to exclusive rewards
- Higher revenue
Let’s take a look at these in more detail.
More visibility
The Superhost badge is basically a badge of honor that lets Airbnb guests know you’re the real deal. This means that guests seek you out more often, and can actively look you up using the Superhost search filter. And that’s on top of the visibility your listing gets when you have a strong SEO strategy for your Airbnb.
Guests can actively seek out Superhosts by filtering their searches. This gives Superhosts more visibility.
To further sweeten the deal, Airbnb regularly features Superhosts in their newsletters, homepage, and promotional emails. This encourages potential guests to notice your Airbnb listing and book a stay at your property.
More trust
Being awarded Superhost status is Airbnb’s way of saying “this host can be trusted and they’re great at what they do!”. That’s because you need to be one heck of a good host to achieve a 4.8 review rate. So, seeing your Superhost badge makes guests much more likely to choose you over a standard host with a similar property.
Access to exclusive rewards
One of Airbnb’s rewards for exceptional hosting is an extra 20% bonus on top of the usual referral bonus. Superhosts also receive a $100 Airbnb travel coupon for every year that they maintain their status.
Higher revenue
All those hard-earned 5-star reviews and increased bookings mean more money in your pocket. Guests are likely to pay more for a Superhost’s higher level of service and experience. This means that Superhosts can afford to charge higher rates (depending on your market).
Pro tip: take a look at statistics on AirDNA to better understand your market, including the average nightly rate.
How to optimize your tech stack for excellent guest experiences
The most difficult part of becoming a Superhost and maintaining your status is the 4.8-star rating requirement. Because if even one out of twelve guests gives you a four-star review, your rating will drop down to 4.9. And it can be a slippery slope from there.
It takes a village to raise ratings to 4.8 or higher. But an optimized tech stack will help you consistently meet high guest expectations.
The best hosting tools are designed to support you in streamlining your processes and improving your guest experience. Think of them as your village. Here’s how to use them:
Achieve a high response rate
To achieve a 90% response rate on Airbnb, you need to answer 90% of the inquiries you receive within 24 hours. This can be especially challenging if you manage vacation rentals full-time.
You could answer everything yourself, or hire someone to do it for you, but some messages will still slip through the cracks. Especially if you have guests in different time zones.
That’s where automated messaging really shines. For example, if you get set up with Operto Guest, you can schedule automated messages to send at specific points in the customer journey, meaning you won’t have to reply to the same question over and over again.
Try consolidating messages from different booking platforms into a single inbox using Operto Guest, and set up “new message” notifications via email or SMS. That way, you’ll never miss an inquiry and your response time will quickly decrease.
Operto Guest automates your messaging to save you time and make sure every guest feels heard.
Automation saves you time. But the personal touch gets reviews. Jetstream’s guest-facing team handles communications in multiple time zones and multiple languages. So your guests never feel ignored.
Offer the best value for money
To achieve a 90% response rate on Airbnb, you need to answer 90% of the inquiries you receive within 24 hours. This can be especially challenging if you manage vacation rentals full-time.
One of the Airbnb criteria you’ll be rated on is “value.” Dynamic pricing tools like Wheelhouse use billions of data points to design personalized pricing strategies so you can keep your prices competitive.
This way, you’re
- Always offering the best value for money
- Still making a profit
Another way to maximize the value you offer is to welcome your guests into a high-tech property that’s designed to make their stay as comfortable as possible.
For example, smart locks offer your guests security and flexibility and smart thermostats automatically cool down the room before guest arrival, or warm it up in winter. (If there was ever a time when you could pretend you’re in your guests’ heads, it’s now).
Pro tip: avoid hardware overwhelm by using a tool like Operto Connect, which can integrate all your smart locks and thermostats through a single platform.
Equipping your property with smart devices welcomes guests into a modern space that caters to their every need.
Reduce your cancellation rate
Sometimes you’re in conversation with a guest before their trip begins, and you just get a bad feeling about them. If you’re a Superhost, you don’t want to jeopardize your low cancellation rate—but that guest could cause major problems for your property.
Next time, screen your guests before the booking is confirmed. You can do this automatically using a tool like Autohost, which offers intelligent guest screening and background checks. Not only will you be alerted to risky guests straight away, but the extra checks will most likely scare off criminal guests from booking in the first place.
No headaches, no awkward cancellation conversations, and no baseless negative reviews.
Pro tip: if you’re choosing a property manager, make sure they’re up to date and comfortable using the latest tech solutions like automatic guest screening. The right tech stack makes property managers more efficient at their job.
Autohost screens guests before they book a stay so you can refuse harmful guests and keep your cancellation rate low.
Wow guests with keyless entry
Automated keyless entry is a definite ‘wow factor’ for guests because it means they can check in easily and safely, pretty much as soon as your cleaning team exits the building.
Once you remove the hassle of liaising with check-in staff, guests enjoy more flexibility—and you’ll enjoy more glowing reviews.
If you’re ready to install keyless entry, combine it with a tool like Operto Guest that can automatically deliver access codes straight to your guests’ phones. You’ll soon reduce your staffing overheads too since won’t have to hire or train anyone to physically check guests in.
Operto Guest’s keyless entry solution offers guests flexibility and makes it easy for them to leave 5-star reviews.
Provide thoughtful welcome books
Nothing screams “I’ve put thought and love into improving your experience” quite as much as providing guests with digital guides that give them all the information they’ll need during their stay.
This small but thoughtful act cuts down on guest communications and makes the guest feel like you’ve anticipated and met their needs (talk about a Superhost move).
With a tool like Operto Guest, you can automatically send guests:
- House manuals
- Check-in and check-out information
- Local activity guides
- Rental on-site amenities
And then some.
By providing digital guides through Operto Guest, hosts can reduce the risk of the negative guest reviews that result from a lack of information.
Leave your property spotless
Letting guests check in to a property that’s anything less than spotless is one of the main reasons behind negative reviews. Your guests expect professional cleaning, and they want to stay somewhere that looks like no one’s ever lived before.
Adding a cleaning management tool like Breezeway or Operto Teams to your tech stack helps you:
- Manage an outsourced cleaning team
- Schedule cleans all in one place
Cleaning management tools like Breezeway help hosts and property managers make sure their properties are left spotless when guests arrive.
Easily complete your 10 stays
To keep getting bookings, your listing needs to consistently rank highly on Airbnb’s search engine (which considers more than 100 factors to match guests with their ideal vacation rental or hotel stay).
It can get real frustrating real fast when you see your listing buried under so many others. Especially after you’ve put so much time and effort into it.
Sure, you can increase the likelihood of getting some more eyes on your listing by
- Increasing your listing and review quality with professional photography and extra descriptive detail about the property and its amenities
- Using a competitive pricing tool (like Wheelhouse) to attract more bookings
- Offering more dates and an ‘Instant Book’ option for potential guests
But that’s a huge amount of work to add to your to-do list.
Instead, you could outsource all that to Jetstream. We can connect you to a super tech stack, including Wheelhouse, and make sure your listings are always optimized to get more bookings.
Dynamic pricing tools like Wheelhouse design personalized and competitive pricing strategies to help you attract more guests and give them their money’s worth.
Our top tip to keep your Superhost badge
Technology helps you automate processes and minimize human error, so in that sense, it’s a must-have. But when it comes to providing exceptional guest experiences, there’s only so much it can achieve.
Our best advice? Truly Superhost-worthy reviews go hand in hand with personalized, human, guest services. But there’s only so much time in the end. Here’s what we suggest:
Give your guests a personalized experience
Automated messages are helpful when you’re answering “what’s the WiFi password?” for the 10th time in a day. But when your guest is at the wrong door at 3 AM during a snowstorm, there’s nothing like a human voice helping them find the right unit and get cozy.
Jetstream’s around-the-clock, multilingual, guest communication service means your guests always have a human to talk to, at any hour of the day.
Jetstream has a team of multilingual guest-facing agents to help you take better care of your guests. With around-the-clock guest communications taken care of, all you have to do is focus on making the guest experience truly personalized.
Answering every guest’s questions within hours is exhausting. Our multilingual team handles guest communication around the clock. So your listing doesn’t sleep when you do.
