Airbnb’s new AI-powered “Guest Favorites” property badge will update daily
The new badge, part of the Airbnb's Winter Release, comes just days after the company shuttered its Plus program, which was a more manual, design-focused evaluation.
In the same week Airbnb’s Plus program officially shut down, the company is launching a new “Guest Favorites” badge that will be automatically added – and removed – from properties through an artificial intelligence-powered system.
Airbnb says it has about 7 million properties on its site and about 2 million of those are marked as “Guest Favorites” as of the launch Wednesday. Users can filter their search to find these properties.
But the designation is not guaranteed for any set time. Airbnb head of global operations Tara Bunch said the system is dynamic and badging may change daily.
“We have these machine learning and artificial intelligence tools that look at all these different areas like the quality rating, the cancellation rate, CS [customer service] tickets, all of the subcategories – cleanliness, accuracy, location, value, etc.,” she said.
“It takes all of those factors and it essentially then automatically, on a daily basis, elevates the guest favorite badge on those properties that are at the top.”
Airbnb created the Plus program in 2018 as a way to identify certain properties for top placement and support. Plus required hosts to apply to receive the designation, and Airbnb inspected properties against a 100-point checklist heavily focused on the property’s design.
The new “Guest Favorites” badge is a more automated – some might say objective – designation. Bunch said that in conjunction with the existing Superhost label, these two designations will “capture the very best hosts and properties. And I think having a third category [of Plus] was just kind of confusing,” Bunch said.
On average, Airbnb said properties that currently have the Guest Favorite label have ratings of at least 4.9 out of 5 and host cancellations and quality-related customer services issues of 1%. The fact that the designation is dynamic can also serve as a motivator for hosts, Bunch said, to address issues that may be hindering their listing.
Also as part of Airbnb’s 2023 Winter Release, the company is redesigning its ratings and review functions. Guest can now sort reviews by date, rating and characteristics of the reviewer – such as those traveling with pets – and to see a chart that shows the distribution of reviews from one to five stars.
And it’s making several updates for hosts, including a simplified interface to add property details and check-in information. Airbnb is also integrating AI to automatically organize photos of listings by room to make it easier for users to understand the layout of a property. And hosts can now connect compatible smart locks to their Airbnb account to automatically generate unique codes for each reservation.
In Airbnb’s earnings call last week – when it reported revenue of $3 billion in the third quarter this year - co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky spoke of multiple growth opportunities for the company, including international expansion and more use of AI to refine products and services.
In September, Chesky announced several updates including a new system to verify listings to prevent fraud and increase trust.
