Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Riches podcast. I’m happier you’re here again. You know how some listings just seem to dominate search results even though they might not have more reviews than yours? Well, there’s actually a badge system that top performing hosts know all about, but most people are a little bit unsure what it actually is and how to get it.

I’m talking about Airbnb’s guest favorite badge, and no, this is not the same as being a Superhost. So in this episode, we break down how this special badge impacts your visibility, your bookings, and ultimately your nightly rates will reveal exactly what it takes to get it and how you can join the other 2.1 million listings worldwide that have made the cut.

Let’s jump into it

so what exactly is Airbnb’s guest favorite badge? Well, very simply, it highlights top performing properties and what guests have found to be their favorite.

And while that seems really simple, it’s a little confusing because [00:01:00] Airbnbs have this thing called Superhost status for quite a long time. But the reality is that the Superhost status is on an account level. You can be a Superhost on top of 20 properties, but the guest favorite badge is property specific.

Okay,

so this is based on property performance and not on host performance, and it’s actually replaced that filter in an Airbnb search for Superhost. That status or that filter is no longer available. And so, so when someone’s out there and they want to find a property that they know is doing well, they’re gonna filter by guest favorite and no longer by Superhost status.

So even though the Superhost filter is gone, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be a Superhost and also have a guest favorite badge on your specific properties. You can definitely have both, and the more the merrier.

And we know that Superhosts do a good job, right? They have certain criteria that they have to meet. They have certain ratings that [00:02:00] they have to meet, just like we’re gonna cover specifically for the guest’s favorite badge. But 72% of all guest favorite badges are coming from Superhost.

So how exactly do we get the guest favorite badge on each of our properties? Well, the first thing is you have to have at least five reviews within the last two years, and they have to have an average review score of 4.9 or higher.

As you might recall, a super host status only requires a 4.8 average, but again, that is on the host profile. We’re talking specifically about one individual property.

The next requirement for getting the guest favorite badge is that you have to have high subcategory scores. Now, I know high isn’t super detailed, but unfortunately this is what Airbnb gives us, and it’s all relative. So your subcategory scores are relative to your competition. If [00:03:00] all of your neighborhood’s not doing a good job on one of these specific areas like cleanliness or check-in or communication, well, then the bar will be dropped and you won’t have to meet those high scores.

But of course, we are in the hospitality business, right? So the goal is having a perfect experience every time.

The last piece is you’ve gotta make sure that you’re not canceling your guest reservations. This is also a super host requirement, and to meet this guest favorite badge for each of your properties, you can’t cancel more than 1% of your reservations. Hopefully you’re doing some good guest verification upfront, so you’re weeding out any sort of red flag. Guess we like to say. And in fact, if you notice some sort of red flag or something looks fishy on a reservation, an upcoming reservation, well you can reach out to Airbnb’s support and you can have that reservation canceled. Penalty free, but you gotta make sure you follow the rules if you’re new to [00:04:00] the channel.

Well, we’ve got hundreds of episodes on how to better operate your short term rentals, how to provide a better guest experience, and ultimately earn as much money as you possibly can. You can go to st riches.com. You can see all of our prior episodes there. We also have a ton of free resources, eBooks, all kinds of things.

My team and I have managed over 50,000 guests, so we’re speaking from real world experience.

So that’s it. Those are the four requirements. You gotta make sure that you have at least five reviews in the last two years. You gotta make sure the average of those review scores is 4.9 or higher. You gotta make sure you haven’t had more than 1% of your reservations canceled, and you gotta make sure that those subcategories of your review score are high.

Yeah, I know that’s a little vague, but it’s relative to your competition.

Now if you are a super achiever out there and you are just blowing it away, and your guests absolutely love you, you’ve got perfect scores across the board each and every time. [00:05:00] Well, you can actually earn a little bit more visibility if you are in the top one, five or 10%. There’s some extra special little baggy things that Airbnb’s gonna put on your listing.

The first one for being in the top percent, you get a gold trophy,

And if you make the top 5% cut, well your listing is going to make it to the top. They’re going to highlight it for you. And lastly, if you make that top 10% cut, well they’re gonna give you a little extra special note above your reviews.

This is, of course, at the time of this recording, we know that Airbnb just like VRBO and booking.com, they’re constantly changing their algorithms, right? And they don’t just give away the secrets, but it’s pretty obvious if you’re not getting good reviews, your property’s not gonna do well. So you gotta make sure that you do a really good job and that you do a really good job on all the different platforms.

This, of course gets a little harder to do the more properties [00:06:00] you have, and that’s why 55% of all the guest badges out there are from single host operators.

The trick is figuring out how to give that sort of single property operator host attention. But on a larger scale, and that’s what our team at Cosley has done. Again, if you’re new to the channel, we’ve managed tens of thousands of guests and lots of properties, and our partners earn those guest favorite badges and they earn that Superhost status.

We, of course, help with all the backend operations, and if you would like to partner with us, well, we’d love to chat with you. You can just go to SDR Riches. Dot com. There’s a little partner with us button and we will jump online, see how we can help.

So how does having this guest favorite badge actually help your visibility? Well, for starters, it’s a filter, right? So we know when someone’s searching for an Airbnb. They’re gonna plug in the location. They’re gonna plug in the [00:07:00] dates. They very often plug in the number of bedrooms if they’re going on vacation versus a work trip or something like that.

Maybe they plug in some special amenities, like. A pool or a spa or something like that. And then to take it a step further, what they used to do, or what seasoned Airbnb users like myself would do to weed out some of the bad operators was to select the Superhost status. But that’s no longer there. Now it’s the guest favorite badge, which is of course, by each property.

And so this filter is there. That means if someone checks this filter and you don’t have the badge, well whoop. You are gone from those search results and you have way less competition now.

So aside from just having the filter, we know that Airbnb’s giving you this badge ’cause they’re doing a good job and they know that the guests that are staying on your property enjoy your property. So it’s easier for Airbnb.

They know that your property’s gonna get booked easier, and so they [00:08:00] boost you up those search rankings and how much they do that? Well, we don’t unfortunately know exactly, but we do know that it’s helpful.

So it’s pretty simple, right? The better you do with your reviews, the more visibility you should have. But I don’t think all of you out there really understand the impact of a negative review. So if you jump back to episode 2 56, we will break that down and we’ll break it down with the numbers. It’s very clear from all the data we have access to that two properties with different review scores, but everything else being equal, they can make completely different amounts of money.

So quick action plan. Take a look at your Airbnb listing. You may be surprised to know that you already have this guest favorite badge, but if you don’t remember those qualifications, if you’re renting your property out for midterm stays, well, it’s gonna take a little longer to get those reviews. You might consider dropping the minimum stay requirements so you can get this badge sooner and not [00:09:00] later.

And if you have any other questions on it, we’ll just drop a comment down below and our team would love to connect with you. See what we can do to help.

Thanks for tuning in to the Short term Rental Richest podcast, and until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.