Julian Sage:                         00:00                     In this video, we’re talking about how to become an Airbnb Superhost quickly and why it’s so important for your business. So stay tuned.

Julian Sage:                         00:07                     Vacation rental machine helps hosts just like you learn how to start grow and scale your short term rental business. The show’s all about creating systems that help you automate your business, give any more time and money freedom. If you’re ready to start living the vacation rental life, then subscribe to this podcast today, come and join us on our Facebook group, the host nation, where we’ll be talking about starting automating and scaling a short term rental business. Now onto the show.

Julian Sage:                         00:34                     Hey, welcome back, host nation to another episode of vacation on the machine. I’m Julian Sage and I’m with Jon Bell and we’re talking about Airbnb super host and HomeAway premier host and what those are, why it’s so important for your business and how you can get there quickly. So Jon, what does it mean to be an Airbnb Superhost to your business and why is it so important when you do have things such as like over 30 listings?

Jon Bell:                               00:52                     Ou know, it’s really important. It kind of goes back to a previous episode, and maybe one of the things I forgot to mention is being an Airbnb super host is one of those things that can help boost you in the search rankings, right? But not only just that, it’s really more of a guest or customer requirement. It helps put them at ease that, Hey, you’re a trusted the platform, trust you.

Jon Bell:                               01:17                     You have great ratings. Whether this is a new property sometimes you won’t have just a track record of five star reviews on a new place. People will look at your Superhost status in some of all of your other reviews and assume this is just another one of those great places that you have that I luckily can book because the other ones are booked. I don’t see any of those. So having that extra status, that extra step up is very important. Now there’s of course, every platform has some type of premier partner or exclusive category of that hosts need to be in, or actually hotel owners or whatever it is. For Airbnb, we already know it’s super host. So Julian, what is an Airbnb Superhost and how can everybody obtain it?

Julian Sage:                         02:05                     So to become an Airbnb Superhost, you have to have these four things. One is that you have to have reviews of 4.8 or above. Two is you need to have at least 10 stays. Three is you have to have a 90% communication rating. And then lastly is you can have only a 1% cancellation rate. Now these are pretty strict and that’s why Airbnb super host status is such a prestigious thing. Because if you are able to maintain these these rates, then that shows that you are complying to the platforms requirements. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad host if you’re not able to make super hosts, it’s just you’re able to maintain their standards.

Julian Sage:                         02:41                     Now, once you have all of these requirements, Airbnb doesn’t just automatically give this to you. They give it out during certain periods. So there’s a review process that Airbnb goes through and then they award Superhost status to everybody who has met these requirements during the certain time period. So Jon being a Superhost kind of the iconic thing that a lot of people do know about, but what are some of the other ways that you can become a premium or Superhost in other types of channels?

Jon Bell:                               03:08                     All right, so VRVO and HomeAway have what they call a premier partner. Premier partner basically means some of the same things that Airbnb has as far as how to get into that club. You can’t have a high cancellation rate, you got to have a good response rate and you gotta have great reviews per property. Homeaway awards, this badge per property, not just to the initial host. So it is a little bit different. But Julianne, one of the hardest things to do with all of these extra at set asides and exclusions for this premiere status is maintaining them. It’s very easy to obtain when you got a new listing and you’ve got 10 people to stay and they all rated five stars and then boom, you’re a Superhost. Well, it’s easy to get, but it’s also very easy to go away. And one of those easy ways for it to go away in Airbnb is the response rate two is just canceling on reservations or not accepting reservation.

Jon Bell:                               04:09                     This is very key. It’s very, very, very hard to actually maintain it because there are some certain guests or situations where you might not want to let them do certain things. The difference between Airbnb and HomeAway is that HomeAway actually puts this award on the property, not necessarily the host, but the set aside is still the same. It’s still elevates your listing above some others, just because you have this certain badge, these badges do mean gold when somebody is looking to book through these channels. So it’s just basically being like a verified place or a verified provider of whatever. You have some credibility to your name when you carry these badges on these certain platforms.

Julian Sage:                         04:56                     So Jon, you have over 30 listings. So super host status is something that is making a big impact on your business and you want to be able to maintain that.

Julian Sage:                         05:05                     So what are some of the things that you’re able to do to be able to protect yourself and be able to make sure that you’re able to keep the status? Because this is really helping you make more money.

Jon Bell:                               05:12                     Definitely. I mean, protecting, protecting your badge is definitely important, right? So there’s certain things that you know you can’t do, you can’t cancel. If you cancel on a guest, that typically means it’s going away. You can’t have it. In Airbnb, it goes away for a full year. You won’t have that badge. That could hurt your business tremendously. Especially when you’re scaling, right? If you’re scaling and you got new listings popping on and people don’t see reviews on the listing, they don’t see like a Superhost on your profile, they might not book with you right away because they’re somewhat scared that something might not be right. You know, it was just found an article the other day of all these undercover or fake Airbnb listings that weren’t really, they were, you kind of come in with that perception.

Jon Bell:                               06:00                     You could be one of those guys without these badges to the people that are booking. So it’s important to keep it and maintain it. How does it help me protect things even when a guest maybe is trying to do something that they’re not supposed to do or trying to claim something that might not happen? For one coming in or calling into the call center for this whatever booking channel, you normally have a set aside line that helps premier hosts, whether that’s super host or premier partners, so you immediately can get a service person on the phone to help you deal with whatever you got to deal with. When you get them on the phone. Sometimes it’s like, Hey listen, this is like not something that I do. This is not something that normally happens. You can check all of the other listings and I’ve heard it many of times when I’ve called Airbnb and said, Hey, yeah, this is not right. I mean, you really, and then they stop me. They say, yeah, you’re right. I’m looking back at all this. Thank you for being a super host. I think this is just a fraudulent thing because this will happen. People will try to get all of their money back for no apparent reason.

Julian Sage:                         07:09                     So question of the day, are you a Superhost yet? Leave it in the comment section down below. Until next time, host nation. Keep on hosting.

Julian Sage:                         07:18                     Hope you hosts found value in this episode. If you did, please go on over to iTunes and leave us a review because that would greatly support the show. If you’d like to connect with Jon, the community. And I then go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation, talk to you hosts in the next episode. Keep on hosting.