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575. Superhost Is Dead, Do This Instead · Thanks For Visiting

• 1:04
  Sarah Karakaian: Hi, welcome back to another great episode.
• 1:06
  Sarah Karakaian: My name is Sarah Karakaian.
• 1:07
  Annette Grant: I'm Annette Grant, and together we are
• 1:09
  Annette and Sarah: Thanks for Visiting
• 1:12
  Sarah Karakaian: If you're an Airbnb host, you've heard it 100 times, you must get Superhost.
• 1:17
  Sarah Karakaian: It's the fastest way to get your listing seen, trusted, and booked.
• 1:22
  Annette Grant: And Superhost does matter.
• 1:24
  Annette Grant: It's Airbnb's first signal to guest and to Airbnb's algorithm that you're an active host who takes care of the people staying with you.
• 1:32
  Annette Grant: To be the best in your market, you have to be a Superhost.
• 1:36
  Sarah Karakaian: But here's the thing: 34% of hosts in the US have the Superhost badge.
• 1:44
  Sarah Karakaian: The day you earn it, you haven't separated yourself as the best really.
• 1:49
  Sarah Karakaian: You've just become one of the third of all Airbnb hosts who are also Superhosts.
• 1:55
  Sarah Karakaian: So when we say Superhost is dead, what we mean is that Superhost as a strategy alone to get bookings is just simply no longer enough.
• 2:06
  Annette Grant: Getting into the 34% isn't the win.
• 2:09
  Annette Grant: Winning inside that group is.
• 2:11
  Sarah Karakaian: Mm-hmm.
• 2:13
  Annette Grant: Inside of our private coaching program, Strategic Host, one of our members, who's incredible, Missy, she was already a Superhost, but wasn't winning financially in her small market.
• 2:24
  Annette Grant: There was almost no competition, and she still couldn't get the same bookings as the other hosts around her.
• 2:30
  Annette Grant: Earning Superhost here simply wasn't enough.
• 2:33
  Annette Grant: Together, we worked, and we optimized her listing and her pricing strategy, and now her numbers beat her market by a wide margin.
• 2:42
  Annette Grant: Here are some of the stats.
• 2:43
  Annette Grant: Her average daily rate now is $191 against the market average of only $161.
• 2:50
  Annette Grant: So $191 ADR versus $164 ADR.
• 2:54
  Annette Grant: That is $27 more per night than any other Superhost in her area.
• 3:01
  Annette Grant: Times that by all the nights she's booked over a year.
• 3:04
  Sarah Karakaian: That's a lot of money.
• 3:05
  Annette Grant: That is game-changing.
• 3:08
  Sarah Karakaian: So today, we're covering the two things that decide who wins inside of that group of Superhosts.
• 3:15
  Sarah Karakaian: First, your listing analytics, then your pricing strategy because we see hosts who have both the badge and incredible reviews, and they are still losing to other hosts in their market.
• 3:28
  Sarah Karakaian: By the end of today's content, you'll know exactly where you stand against your own market and what to fix, since the badge alone, being Superhost, just isn't enough.
• 3:40
  Annette Grant: First, let's cover what's required to earn the Airbnb Superhost status badge.
• 3:46
  Annette Grant: It's comprised of four numbers, and those are checked automatically each quarter.
• 3:51
  Annette Grant: First, there's a 4.8 or higher overall rating average across your last 365 days, a 90% response rate, meaning you're replying to new inquiries and booking requests within 24 hours, a cancellation rate under 1%, so basically that's one cancellation
• 4:12
  Annette Grant: for every 100 reservations you take, and at least 10 completed stays or three stays totaling 100 nights or more.
• 4:20
  Sarah Karakaian: Oof.
• 4:23
  Sarah Karakaian: Airbnb checks all four of those requirements every single quarter on January 1st, April 1st, July 1st, and October 1st.
• 4:31
  Sarah Karakaian: Hit all four of them and you get to keep the badge for the next three months.
• 4:34
  Sarah Karakaian: But if you miss even one, Superhost is gone that day.
• 4:39
  Annette Grant: And don't get us wrong, Superhost is absolutely an accomplishment.
• 4:43
  Sarah Karakaian: But what it's not is it's not a strategy.
• 4:46
  Sarah Karakaian: It's Airbnb telling you that you're active and dependable, congratulations, but so are 34% of hosts in the US.
• 4:53
  Sarah Karakaian: It's not Airbnb telling a guest that you're the best listing in your area.
• 4:58
  Sarah Karakaian: That actually falls on you to do.
• 5:02
  Sarah Karakaian: Which brings us the first thing that separates hosts inside that 34%.
• 5:07
  Sarah Karakaian: Are you being seen at all?
• 5:09
  Sarah Karakaian: We know for sure that Superhost increases your visibility, but what are we doing to be seen amongst that 34% of hosts in your market who also got that same boost?
• 5:22
  Annette Grant: Airbnb's professional hosting tools show you four numbers, your average overall conversion rate, first page search impression rate, average search to listing conversion rate, and average listing to booking conversion rate.
• 5:38
  Annette Grant: If you do not have professional hosting tools turned on, please do that.
• 5:43
  Annette Grant: We did an entire video on this, and we'll make sure to link it in the description below.
• 5:48
  Annette Grant: This answers three questions when you review these stats.
• 5:51
  Annette Grant: Are you showing up in search when a guest filters for their dates in your area?
• 5:57
  Annette Grant: Are guests clicking on your listing once they see it?
• 6:01
  Annette Grant: And are they booking once they click?
• 6:05
  Sarah Karakaian: The trust that Superhost builds only matters if someone looking, if someone's looking at your listing.
• 6:11
  Sarah Karakaian: But if your hero image isn't earning that potential guest clicking it, or your title reads like every other cabin, retreat, getaway in your market, the badge sitting on your profile doesn't really matter because no one's clicking through far
• 6:28
  Sarah Karakaian: enough to even see it.
• 6:30
  Annette Grant: We talk to Superhosts constantly who have incredible reviews, and they still aren't booked, and almost every time they have never opened up their analytics page to see where those guests are dropping off of their booking funnel.
• 6:46
  Sarah Karakaian: When your first page search impression rate is solid, meaning guests are actually seeing you, but your search to listing conversion is falling behind, the bottleneck then is probably your title and/or your hero image.
• 7:02
  Sarah Karakaian: If guests are clicking but not booking you, the problem usually lives in your photo gallery or your description is leaving too many questions unanswered.
• 7:12
  Sarah Karakaian: You can see that in your listing to, to booking conversion rate.
• 7:16
  Sarah Karakaian: Those are all completely different fixes, and you can only tell them apart by looking at the data that Airbnb gives you.
• 7:24
  Annette Grant: Yes, and the mistake we see most hosts make, they panic drop their price the second their bookings slow down when the issue was likely three steps earlier in that guest booking process.
• 7:38
  Sarah Karakaian: So all this to say, if your numbers aren't where they need to be, fixing your photos and your title could solve it.
• 7:45
  Sarah Karakaian: We'll cover how your pricing strategy could be fixed too.
• 7:48
  Sarah Karakaian: That's coming next.
• 7:49
  Annette Grant: By the way, if you've never looked at your listing analytics or you have and you still have no idea what you're looking at, that's exactly what we walk through when you learn with us live.
• 8:00
  Annette Grant: Links in the description to save your seat.
• 8:04
  Sarah Karakaian: The second thing that separates hosts inside of that 34% of superhosts is the big scary words, revenue management strategy.
• 8:14
  Sarah Karakaian: Most hosts hear revenue management and they think we mean opening up Price Labs, setting it once, maybe connecting it to your listing, and then letting Price Labs, quote-unquote, "do its thing."
• 8:23
  Annette Grant: Hmm, not so fast.
• 8:25
  Annette Grant: Revenue management strategy covers your booking window, meaning how far out guests in your specific market are booking.
• 8:32
  Annette Grant: Some markets, their booking window's 60 days out, other ones, six months out.
• 8:37
  Annette Grant: Our market, we book six days out.
• 8:40
  Sarah Karakaian: Six days.
• 8:40
  Annette Grant: If your calendar settings don't match that window, you are either scaring off guests who w- want to plan ahead, or worse, you are leaving thousands of dollars on the table by not pricing right for your booking window.
• 8:53
  Sarah Karakaian: All right, if we lost you with all the numbers, I want you to come back to me right now because this is what so many of you are falling victim to.
• 9:01
  Sarah Karakaian: Your minimum stay settings impact your numbers, too.
• 9:05
  Sarah Karakaian: Let's say you're stuck on a seven-night minimum because that's what, quote-unquote, "everyone in your market does," and you never went back and questioned it, or you never offered a one-night stay at all because you're convinced that no guest
• 9:18
  Sarah Karakaian: would ever pay your rate plus the cleaning fee for just one night.
• 9:22
  Sarah Karakaian: But both of those are assumptions.
• 9:24
  Sarah Karakaian: They are not based on any sort of strategy that you've put together, and both of them can keep you from showing up when a guest searches.
• 9:31
  Sarah Karakaian: Your superhost badge never gets seen by the guest because your listing was never seen in the first place.
• 9:39
  Annette Grant: You also need to understand how your specific market as a whole is performing right now.
• 9:46
  Sarah Karakaian: Circling back to our client, Missy's numbers, she was already a superhost, but she wasn't making as much money as her competition was.
• 9:54
  Sarah Karakaian: Her revenue gap closed the moment she started reading her listing analytics and her market data together.
• 10:01
  Sarah Karakaian: 77% occupancy against her market's 66% occupancy.
• 10:05
  Annette Grant: Plus that ADR increase that we spoke about earlier.
• 10:08
  Sarah Karakaian: Right.
• 10:08
  Sarah Karakaian: That's right.
• 10:09
  Annette Grant: Those two combined, like we said, game changer.
• 10:14
  Annette Grant: And don't skip this.
• 10:15
  Annette Grant: Hosts will randomly update their listing or they'll tinker with their pricing with absolutely no strategy and convince themselves market saturation must be to blame here.
• 10:30
  Sarah Karakaian: Superhost gets you in the room.
• 10:33
  Sarah Karakaian: Your listing gets you seen.
• 10:36
  Sarah Karakaian: But it's your strategic pricing that gets you more money.
• 10:40
  Annette Grant: Listen, being in the 34% of all Airbnb hosts, that is not the gold medal at the finish line.
• 10:48
  Annette Grant: That's really the floor.
• 10:49
  Sarah Karakaian: The floor.
• 10:50
  Annette Grant: Baseline.
• 10:52
  Sarah Karakaian: All right, so this week I need you to review your analytics.
• 10:56
  Sarah Karakaian: Put your average daily rate, your ADR, your occupancy and your RevPAR next to your market average, the same exact way our client, Missy, did.
• 11:06
  Annette Grant: And where do you land against those three numbers?
• 11:09
  Annette Grant: That'll tell you which one of today's two things needs your attention first.
• 11:13
  Annette Grant: Is it your listing, or more importantly, your pricing?
• 11:18
  Annette Grant: Inside Strategic Host, this is the exact work we do alongside with the hosts who are already ho- superhosts and wanna go further, get more bookings and make more money.
• 11:28
  Sarah Karakaian: You can join us live to see exactly how Strategic Hoste will make you more money.
• 11:33
  Sarah Karakaian: There is a link in the description to find out more.
• 11:37
  Sarah Karakaian: And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.
• 11:39
  Annette Grant: I'm Annette Grant, and together we are...
• 11:41
  Annette and Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.