Airbnb is constantly finding new ways to highlight top-performing properties and hosts. In addition to the existing labels “Guest favorites” and “Superhost”, the company has now introduced a new label for the top 25% and top 1% properties on the listing page.
While Airbnb typically releases updates biannually, in the form of winter and summer releases, they have now decided to add a spring update to the mix. This latest update includes the new top property badge, which takes into account metrics such as subcategory ratings, review sentiment, host cancellations, and quality-related customer service issues.
The company has also implemented a badge for the bottom 10% of properties, indicating low quality. This is a result of Airbnb’s updated hosting quality measurement system, launched in April, which has resulted in the removal of 100,000 properties from the platform.
In November of last year, Airbnb introduced a feature allowing users to sort reviews by most recent or highest rated. With this newest update, they have included the ability to sort by lowest rated reviews as well.
“Superhost” is an existing label on Airbnb, based on criteria such as ratings across all properties and cancellation rate. “Guest Favorites” is another label, featuring two million top properties out of 7.7 million on the platform. While a property can have all three labels, the overlapping metrics make it difficult to determine which holds more significance.
In addition to these updates, Airbnb has also provided an update on another badge introduced last year: verified properties. The company announced in September 2023 that all properties in their top five markets – the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., and France – would be verified in order to eliminate fake listings. With a review process involving anti-fraud technology and human review, Airbnb announced today that by the end of this month, nearly 1.5 million properties in these five markets will be verified and display a verification badge next to their listings.
Airbnb has plans to introduce photo and video verification tools for hosts to verify their listings, as well as extend verification to 30 more countries by Q3 of this year.
In November of last year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky shared with TechCrunch that the company’s focus would be on releasing updates to improve their core products before tackling AI-powered features, such as review summaries. During last month’s quarterly earnings call, Chesky mentioned using AI to create the “ultimate concierge”, which hints at more AI-related features in future updates.
