What Is Airbnb Guest Favorites?

An Airbnb Guest Favorite is a listing in Airbnb's Guest Favorites collection, the homes guests love most, picked from ratings, reviews and reliability data, and it shows a Guest Favorite badge (Guest Favorites and highlights (Airbnb Help Center)). Guests can filter their search to see only these listings (Guest Favorites and highlights (Airbnb Help Center)).

Last updated: November 2026

How an Airbnb Guest Favorite is chosen

A listing has to clear a review threshold before it can be considered. The rule on Airbnb's help page is at least 5 reviews in the past 4 years, with at least 1 of them in the past 2 years (Guest Favorites and highlights (Airbnb Help Center)). A November 2025 hosting article gives a shorter window for the percentile highlight, 5 reviews in the past 2 years, and notes that its information may have changed since publication, so the help page is the rule to follow (New highlight helps top homes stand out (Airbnb Resources, 12 November 2025)).

Airbnb runs the selection automatically and repeats it every day (Guest Favourite badge (Airbnb Help Center)). It also judges each listing on its own: a host's other listings neither help nor hurt it (Guest Favourite badge (Airbnb Help Center)). Airbnb also says additional factors and exclusions may apply and can change (Guest Favorites and highlights (Airbnb Help Center)).

Why the Airbnb Guest Favorite badge matters for hotel and rental distribution

The collection is selective. At launch on 8 November 2023 it held 2 million homes out of more than 7 million listings worldwide (Airbnb introduces Guest Favorites (Airbnb Newsroom, 8 November 2023)). By June 2024, Guest Favorites listings had recorded more than 100 million nights booked since the feature went live (Revealing 10 of the top 1% homes around the world (Airbnb Newsroom, 10 June 2024)). In 2025 about 2.1 million listings, 43% of those eligible, held the badge (How to Earn the Airbnb Guest Favorites Badge (AirDNA, 2025)).

For a hotel, aparthotel or property manager selling on several channels, the badge depends on day-to-day operations. Reliability data feeds the selection, so a reservation the property has to cancel on Airbnb counts against the listing, whatever the cause. A night sold on another channel and left open on Airbnb is the classic cause, and an Airbnb guest who books it creates a host cancellation. Keeping availability identical across every channel protects the badge as well as the guest. The wider levers for Airbnb performance are covered in how to get more bookings on Airbnb, and review wording in Airbnb review examples for hosts and guests.

Airbnb Guest Favorites compared with Superhost, the top-percentile highlight and Airbnb Plus

 Guest FavoritesSuperhostTop 1%, 5% and 10% highlightAirbnb Plus
What earns itA listingA hostA listing already ranked among eligible placesA home that passed an inspection-based tier
How often it is checkedEvery dayEvery quarterWith the Guest Favorites rankingNo longer applies
Status todayLiveLiveLiveDiscontinued the week Guest Favorites launched

Sources for the table: Guest Favourite badge (Airbnb Help Center), How to become a Superhost (Airbnb Help Center), Guest Favorites and highlights (Airbnb Help Center), Airbnb launches Guest Favorites and Listings tab in Winter Release (Short Term Rentalz, 8 November 2023).

The two programs overlap heavily. At launch almost two thirds of Guest Favorites were listed by Superhosts (Airbnb launches Guest Favorites and Listings tab in Winter Release (Short Term Rentalz, 8 November 2023)).

Frequently asked questions

What does guest favorite mean on Airbnb?
It means past guests rated the listing highly and its stays ran with few problems. When Airbnb launched the collection in November 2023, Guest Favorites averaged host cancellations and quality-related customer service issues of 1%.
How do you get guest favorite?
After meeting the review threshold, a listing is ranked on what guests report and how reliable it is. The factors Airbnb lists are star ratings, review text, messages between host and guest on the platform, the six category ratings (check-in, cleanliness, accuracy, communication, location and value), the host cancellation rate, the review removal rate, and quality incidents reported to customer service. Each one is something the operator can work on.
How do you become a guest favorite with an already high rating?
A high rating raises the odds sharply. At launch the collection's listings averaged above 4.9 stars. In AirDNA's 2025 data, a listing rated 4.7 to 4.85 had a 16% chance of the badge, 4.85 to 4.95 had 69%, and 5.0 had 92%. About 700,000 listings rated 4.85 or higher still lack it.
What is the gold guest favorite badge?
It marks the top tier inside the collection. Listings in the top 1%, 5% or 10% of eligible places show a gold trophy, a gold Guest Favorite badge, a highlight at the top of the listing page and a label above the reviews. The scale works at the other end too: the bottom 10% of eligible listings get a label above their reviews, but only after Airbnb has already contacted the host about quality.

Related terms

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Where Jetstream fits

A guest favorite badge rests on bookings that hold, and bookings hold when every channel shows the same rooms, rates and availability. Jetstream builds an AI channel manager that connects a property's systems to the channels where guests book and keeps that inventory accurate on each one, managed from one place.

See Jetstream's AI channel manager Book a demo