Airbnb Put Guest Favorite in the Spotlight. Superhost Still Marks the Bigger Earners.
When an Airbnb home holds both of the company's quality badges, search results show only one, Guest Favorite. The badge left off the card, Superhost, is the one tied to the bigger revenue gap.
Among comparable U.S. listings, Guest Favorites whose hosts were also Superhosts took in 36% more in booked revenue over the past year than Guest Favorites whose hosts weren't, according to AirROI, a short-term-rental data firm, which compared about 800,000 listings with at least five reviews, matching each with similar homes nearby by size, rating and review count. A Superhost's listing that was also a Guest Favorite earned 10% more than one that wasn't.
An earlier AirROI study of U.S. listings that won Superhost in January or April found their revenue from new bookings ran only about 1% further ahead than the lead they already had. The host badge, at least, marks hosts who were already filling calendars. It also requires at least 10 stays a year, or three totalling at least 100 nights, so it partly reflects bookings already made.
The question is live this week. Airbnb's quarterly Superhost review, a seven-day assessment, began Oct. 1, after nearly three years in which the company steered guests toward Guest Favorite with a search filter and a spot on search cards. Its chief executive said in February that Guest Favorites make up about half of bookings.
The two badges grade different things. Superhost scores a host's whole account, once a quarter. Guest Favorite scores each home, every day, against other homes.
The stakes fall on hosts whose Superhost badge drops off search cards when their listing is also a Guest Favorite, and on property managers whose co-hosted listings can't count toward Superhost.
Airbnb's 60% Claim, Graded
Airbnb's Resource Center tells hosts that "Superhosts earn 60% more than hosts who aren't," a figure its footnote says is "[b]ased on median earnings for Superhosts and non-Superhosts from October 2023 to October 2024."
Listing by listing, AirROI's raw numbers point the same way. Across active U.S. listings with a full year of history, including those with few reviews, the median Superhost listing took in about $38,000 in booked revenue over the past year, about half again the $25,700 for other listings. Airbnb's figure compares hosts, not listings.
Part of that edge disappears once like is set against like.
Set against similar homes nearby with similar ratings and review counts, Superhost listings with at least five reviews earned 32% more than comparable listings without a Superhost host. Guest Favorites earned 19% more than comparable listings without the badge.
Homes holding both did best: 44% more than comparable homes with neither, on about 33 more booked nights a year, roughly an extra month, at about the same nightly rate. About half of these listings carry both badges, and a fifth carry neither.
Airbnb's Help Center still says "Superhosts have more visibility, earning potential, and get access to exclusive rewards," even as its search-card rule hides the Superhost badge on Guest Favorites.
The Badge Guests Can Filter For
Airbnb has spent nearly three years pointing guests at the other badge. "We've simplified some of our search filters and added a new Guest Favorites filter to help guests find some of the most-loved homes on the platform," a spokesperson told Skift in April 2024. Its current filter list offers Guest Favorites under "Standout stays" and no Superhost option.
Search cards follow the same rule. "If you're a Superhost who has a listing included in Guest Favorites, both will be highlighted on your listing page and your listing will have a Guest Favorite badge in search results," Airbnb's Help Center says.
"Now that Guest Favorites are approximately half of our bookings, the trip quality, which is the score we look at, has gone up significantly," Chief Executive Brian Chesky said on the company's Feb. 12 earnings call. "That means that repeat use is stronger."
One operator read the shift the same way when the filter arrived. "So now you're searching for the Guest Favorite, which is much more of a focus on the individual property, as opposed to the host itself," Matthew Orley, chief executive of New York property manager Red Cottage, told Skift in April 2024.
Booked revenue points the other way.
For a typical comparable Guest Favorite, a Superhost host went with about $13,000 more a year.
Austin shows the pattern up close. Among two- and three-bedroom entire homes there rated 4.9 or higher with 20 to 99 reviews, both-badge homes took in about $11,000 more than Guest Favorites without a Superhost host, on 34 more booked nights, at nearly identical nightly rates. In Panama City Beach, Fla., the same gap was nearly $15,000.
The order held abroad. In each of the nine other countries in the comparison, a Superhost host went with a bigger gap on a Guest Favorite than Guest Favorite did on a Superhost's listing, from 35% against 2% in Canada to 22% against 19% in Portugal, the closest.
Airbnb said in 2024 that "nearly two-thirds of Guest Favorites come from superhosts"; among U.S. listings with at least five reviews in AirROI's data, the share was 81%.
Where Guest Favorite Keeps Pace
The listing badge tracks its biggest gap where a listing has few reviews. Among listings with five to 19 reviews, Guest Favorites earned 34% more than comparable listings without the badge, slightly above Superhost's 32% gap.
With 100 or more reviews, Guest Favorite's gap fell to 6%, against 25% for Superhost.
Professionally managed listings are the other exception. Among them, Guest Favorites whose hosts weren't Superhosts earned 8% more than comparable Superhost listings without Guest Favorite. Among individual hosts, the same kind of Guest Favorite trailed or matched its Superhost counterpart.
Airbnb's rules may explain part of the split. Superhost is judged "for all listings on your account," and "[l]istings where the host is a co-host don't count toward Superhost eligibility," its Help Center says. That may make the host badge a blunter signal for managers.
Guest Favorite's add-on gap also shrinks in the biggest homes. In homes with four or more bedrooms, Guest Favorite on top of Superhost came with 5% more revenue, against 10% across all sizes, though still positive. A preprint by Zhanhong Cui and Kai Li of Northeastern University in Shenyang, posted in March and not peer-reviewed, found both badges "significantly increase merchant revenue" but turn negative for high-capacity listings.
What the Badges Measure
Superhost's yearly bar covers stays hosted, replies within a day, cancellations and an overall rating of at least 4.8. Guest Favorite weighs ratings, review text, cancellations and quality incidents, with no published rating cutoff; Airbnb launched the set as homes "rated above 4.9 stars on average."
Airbnb's ranking explainer names the habits behind the host badge, not the badge itself: "for homes the algorithm considers the Superhost criteria—the number of cancellations by a host, the responsiveness of the host, and ratings and reviews for a listing—when ordering search results."
The stays rule builds some bookings into the host badge. Yet among listings with 100 or more reviews, where that bar should rarely bind, the Superhost gap was still 25%.
Matt Meister and Nicholas Reinholtz found in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2025 that "properties with the superhost designation receive lower ratings," which suggests a Superhost listing and a non-Superhost listing with the same rating may not be equally good homes.
Other research adds a second caveat. Heeyon Kim, Qian Wang and Martina Montauti found in Organization Science in April that Airbnb Plus, an earlier listing badge, had "a negative treatment effect on the revenues of noncertified listings in Los Angeles." Part of any badge gap, in other words, may be business lost by the homes without one.
"In many ways, the success of my business hinges on achieving five-star reviews," Katie Cline, a Superhost with two rentals in upstate New York, wrote in a Business Insider essay last updated in August.
Seven Days in October
When the seven-day assessment closes, Airbnb will tell each host whether they hold Superhost status for the rest of the year. On homes that are also Guest Favorites, search cards will keep showing only the listing badge, which Airbnb rechecks every day.
The next Superhost review opens Jan. 1.
About the data: AirROI compared U.S. listings with at least five reviews and a year of history, matching each with homes in the same map area of similar size, room type, review count and rating. Revenue is booked, over the 12 months to early September.
Frequently Asked Questions
Airbnb evaluates eligible homes every day against other homes globally and/or within their country, using overall and category ratings, review text, host cancellations, review removals and quality-related incidents. A listing needs at least five reviews in the past four years, with at least one of them in the past two years. There is no fixed rating threshold in Airbnb's rules; Guest Favorites launched with an average above 4.9 stars, and the top 1%, 5% and 10% of eligible homes get a gold trophy.
A Superhost must be the listing owner, with an account in good standing, and over the past 12 months must have hosted 10 reservations or three totalling at least 100 nights, responded to 90% of new messages and accepted or declined requests within a day, kept cancellations under 1% and held an overall rating of 4.8 or higher. Airbnb checks these in seven-day assessments beginning Jan. 1, April 1, July 1 and Oct. 1. Listings a host only co-hosts don't count.
Yes: Guest Favorite is awarded to a listing and Superhost to a host, and about one in five Guest Favorites in AirROI's U.S. sample of listings with at least five reviews had a host without Superhost status. When a listing holds both, search results show only the Guest Favorite badge, while the listing page shows both. Guests can filter search results for Guest Favorites, but Airbnb offers no Superhost filter.
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