Guest Favourite on Airbnb: the award that has replaced Superhost as the strongest signal
One tenth of a point separates it from Superhost — and that tenth decides which listing sits higher in search.
What is a Guest Favourite?
Guest Favourite is an Airbnb award for listings that guests rate particularly well. It requires an overall rating from 4.9 upwards and strong scores in the subcategories — cleanliness, accuracy of the listing, communication, location, amenities and value. It carries more force in search ranking than the Superhost badge.
What is required
The overall rating from 4.9 is the familiar hurdle. The real one lies beneath it: Airbnb scores six subcategories separately, and weak scores in any one of them prevent the award even when the overall average holds.
- Cleanliness — the category with the most deductions and the only one that can be solved entirely by organisation
- Accuracy of the listing — scores whether the flat delivers what the images and the amenity list promise
- Communication — availability and clarity before and during the stay
- Location, amenities and value — the three that are least open to short-term influence
The trap is called accuracy
A widespread piece of advice is to tick as many amenities as possible in order to appear in more search filters. For Guest Favourite that is the most expensive advice you can follow.
If a guest fails to find a ticked amenity — the workspace, the hairdryer, the air conditioning — they mark down the accuracy subcategory. That is precisely the one that counts for the award. The visibility gained from one extra tick is small; the loss in the rating is lasting.
The rule that follows is simple: tick what a guest can find and use without asking.
Frequently asked questions
- How do you become a Guest Favourite?
- Through an overall rating from 4.9 and good scores in all six subcategories — cleanliness, accuracy, communication, location, amenities, value. Unlike Superhost there is no fixed number of stays or response rate; what decides is how satisfied guests actually were.
- What is the difference from Superhost?
- Superhost measures the host's conduct: response rate, cancellations, number of stays, rating from 4.8. Guest Favourite measures only how well guests rate the accommodation — from 4.9 and with strong subcategories. The second award carries more force in search, the first is easier to reach.
- Why do I lose the award despite good reviews?
- Usually because of a single weak subcategory. The commonest case is accuracy: a ticked amenity a guest cannot find costs points there without the overall average losing much. The second commonest is cleanliness after a changeover done under time pressure.
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