Winning Airbnb's Superhost Badge Brought Little Lift in Revenue From New Bookings
Airbnb tells hosts that its Superhosts have "more visibility, earning potential." When thousands of U.S. listings won the badge this year, their edge over similar homes was on the books before guests saw it.
Revenue from stays booked after the assessment ran 11.2% ahead of comparable homes, barely more than the 10.3% lead on stays booked before it, according to AirROI, a short-term-rental data firm, which matched 11,404 U.S. listings that became Superhosts in January or April with similar homes that did not.
The difference, about 1% under the closest match, is too small to tell apart from zero. Looser matching lifts it only to 3% to 5%.
At stake is where hosts spend their effort, and what the badge tells guests. It now sits on nearly three in five active U.S. entire homes, while Airbnb's chief executive, Brian Chesky, talks up a newer label that rates homes instead of hosts.
He said on the company's Feb. 12 earnings call that "in Q4, Guest Favorites made up nearly half of all bookings on Airbnb." Superhosts went unmentioned on that call and on the two since.
The badge's reputation rests on a number from Airbnb itself. "From July through September 2022 the typical Superhost earned 64 percent more than a regular Host," the company said in a newsroom post celebrating a million Superhosts.
Footnotes to that February 2023 post call it a comparison of typical Superhost and typical Host earnings, and add: "Host earnings vary widely depending on many factors, including availability, price, acceptance and cancellation rates, occupancy rate and the demand in the listing location."
The gap is real, and in AirROI's data it is wider. Across more than 600,000 active U.S. entire homes, a far wider group than the matched sample, the median Superhost took in about $50,000 over the year through August, roughly twice what a non-Superhost in the same city with the same number of bedrooms earned. Superhosts came out ahead in nearly every one of more than 2,000 local comparisons.
How much of that the badge itself creates is a separate question.
Twice the Revenue, Mostly From Booked Nights
Superhosts barely charge more. Their median nightly rate was about 3% above their neighbors'. The difference is in how often guests come: median occupancy, the share of nights booked or blocked by the host, was 36.5% for Superhosts and 19% for everyone else.
The twofold gap holds at every property size.
| Bedrooms | Median revenue, Superhost | Median revenue, non-Superhost |
|---|---|---|
| Studio/1BR | $31,000 | $16,000 |
| 2BR | $40,000 | $21,000 |
| 3BR | $50,000 | $26,000 |
| 4BR+ | $82,000 | $43,000 |
The gap is widest at the bottom of the market, where a Superhost at the 10th percentile earned more than three times as much as a non-Superhost, and narrows to about one and a half times at the 90th.
Much of the gap traces to what earns the badge in the first place. The typical Superhost is rated 4.91 against 4.77 for a non-Superhost and has about twice as many reviews. Ratings move revenue on their own, as AirROI found in a study of the Airbnb rating revenue cliff.
Ratings also decide who gets the badge, since Airbnb requires an overall score of 4.8 or higher. Limit both sides to homes rated that high with at least 10 reviews, and the Superhost lead shrinks to 58%, from about double.
In Nashville, two-bedroom Superhost homes out-earned their neighbors about threefold. Among well-rated homes on both sides, a group that included just 67 non-Superhosts, the edge fell to 10%. In four other top U.S. Airbnb markets, it narrowed far less.
| Market and size | Superhost multiple, all active homes | Superhost multiple, rated 4.8+ with 10+ reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Nashville 2BR | 3.1x | 1.1x |
| Gatlinburg 2BR | 2.3x | 1.8x |
| Austin 2BR | 1.9x | 1.5x |
| Scottsdale 3BR | 1.9x | 1.5x |
| Kissimmee 4BR+ | 2.1x | 1.5x |
Before and After the Badge
Airbnb's own schedule allows a sharper test. "Every 3 months, we evaluate your performance as a host over the past 12 months for all listings on your account," the company's help center says, and status changes pile up around the quarterly assessments in January, April, July and October.
That makes it possible to follow the same homes across the day their status changed. Against matched listings in the same city that stayed without the badge, the new Superhosts earned 10.7% more over the next three months.
It looks like a badge effect until the revenue is split by booking date. The lead was nearly as large on stays booked before the badge appeared as on those booked after. Even stays in the assessment month itself, reserved before the badge could show, ran nearly 10% ahead.
The rules explain why. A host who clears Airbnb's bars for ratings, completed stays, reply speed and cancellations is, almost by definition, already booking more than most hosts and collecting reviews.
The badge may even carry a cost. Matt Meister of the University of San Francisco and Nicholas Reinholtz of the University of Colorado Boulder found in a peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research last December, that when a property gains the designation, "its ratings subsequently get worse."
In their follow-up experiments, a certified listing could end up chosen less often. "The positive effect of signaling quality is more than offset by the negative effect of reduced ratings," they wrote.
The strongest case for the badge uses the same quarterly schedule. A 2023 working paper by Rajan Mishra and Guofang Huang of Purdue University and Manohar Kalwani, not peer-reviewed, found "a significantly positive impact of the Superhost badge system" on Airbnb's bookings and revenue. Part of it ran through "new to the platform properties with few ratings and reviews," where guests have little else to go on; AirROI's comparison holds ratings and review counts roughly level.
What Losing the Badge Costs
Of the U.S. listings that lost the badge at the same two assessments, AirROI matched 15,872 with comparable homes that kept it. Stays already on their books ran 1.2% behind those homes. Bookings made after the loss ran 7.2% behind.
That leaves a penalty of about 6% on revenue from new bookings under the closest match. For the median matched listing, which took in about $3,900 from bookings made after the loss over the next three months, that comes to roughly $250.
Matched less strictly, the penalty shrinks to 1% to 2%.
Ratings alone don't explain it. Homes still rated 4.8 or higher just before the loss took a slightly larger hit. Airbnb's other criteria are a cancellation rate under 1%, prompt replies and a minimum number of stays.
Nicki Hutchman, who runs the vacation-rental company Competa Escapes in Málaga, Spain, told Skift in April 2024 that a high share of direct bookings, as at her company, can leave a host short of the stays bar. "You can be excellent at what you do and score very highly, but if you don't get the minimum number of nights … you may not make this quota," she said.
A cancellation brings its own penalties. Airbnb's host cancellation policy warns that hosts who cancel "may have their Listing or account suspended or removed, and may lose their Superhost status." The 6% likely reflects the badge together with whatever slip cost it.
The penalty didn't show up at the top of the market. Among matched listings that lost the badge, those in the top 10% by prior-quarter revenue showed no measurable change in new-booking revenue, though the estimate is too loose to rule out a hit. The rest lost 8.5%.
Those top earners had not built longer records. They had slightly fewer reviews than the other listings that lost the badge, and about the same rating. Whatever lifts a home into the top tenth, such as its size or its location, may carry it without the badge.
A Label Most Hosts Now Carry
In August, 58% of active U.S. entire homes carried the badge, up from 57% a year earlier, according to AirROI, and each quarterly review moves tens of thousands of listings on and off.
The label Chesky promoted is built from the same ingredients. Airbnb launched Guest Favorites in November 2023 as a collection of "the 2 million most-loved homes on Airbnb based on ratings, reviews, and reliability."
Operators have noticed. Matthew Orley, chief executive of the New York vacation-rental manager Red Cottage, said in an April 2024 Skift article that guests are now "searching for the Guest Favorite, which is much more of a focus on the individual property, as opposed to the host itself."
An Airbnb spokesperson told Skift at the time: "Guests will still be able to see whether their host is a superhost on the listing page. Today, nearly two-thirds of Guest Favorites come from superhosts."
Wendy Qi, who owns and manages eight Airbnb properties with her husband, said in the same article that "you could be a superhost but guests may not favor you."
Airbnb's next assessment begins Oct. 1. Over seven days, the company will weigh a year of every host's ratings, stays, replies and cancellations and decide which hosts carry the badge for the year's final quarter. If past quarters are a guide, tens of thousands of U.S. homes will lose it.
About the data: AirROI compared U.S. entire homes whose Superhost status changed at Airbnb's January or April 2026 assessment with unchanged homes in the same city of similar size, prior-quarter revenue, rating and review count, splitting revenue by booking date.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Compared within the same U.S. city and bedroom count, the median Superhost home took in about $50,000 over the past year, roughly twice a non-Superhost's. The difference comes from booking far more nights rather than charging more, and it narrows by nearly half when both sides are equally well rated.
Revenue from new bookings tends to fall. In AirROI's closest comparison of matched U.S. listings that lost the badge at Airbnb's January or April assessment, new-booking revenue dropped about 6% against similar homes that kept it, net of the gap already on their books, and looser matching shows a smaller drop. Homes in the top tenth by prior-quarter revenue showed no measurable change, though that estimate is imprecise, and a host can win the badge back at a later quarterly review.
Airbnb looks for an overall rating of 4.8 or higher and at least 10 reservations over the past year (fewer if they are long stays), along with prompt replies to new messages and almost no host cancellations. It reviews every host once a quarter, and a newly earned badge can take up to a week to show on a listing.
Not formally. Superhost rates the host, while Guest Favorites rates each home on ratings, reviews and reliability; in April 2024, Airbnb said guests could still see Superhost status on the listing page and that nearly two-thirds of Guest Favorite homes came from Superhosts. Its chief executive said in February that Guest Favorites made up nearly half of all bookings in the last quarter of 2025.
