The Airbnb Story: How Three Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions of Dollars … and Plenty of Enemies

by (Journalist) Leigh Gallagher

Early on, the founders learned that they were in possession of a valuable currency: the ability to determine where a host’s listing would show up in search rankings. That ability could be used as a powerful reward mechanism to its hosts: those who provided positive experiences for guests and received good reviews would get vaulted to the top of search results, giving them greater exposure and increasing their chances of future bookings. But decline too many requests or respond too slowly or cancel too many reservations or simply appear inhospitable in reviews, and Airbnb can drop a powerful hammer: it can lower your listing in search results or even deactivate your account. Behave well, though, and Airbnb will shine its love upon you. If you hit a certain series of performance metrics — in the past year, if you have hosted at least ten trips, if you have maintained a 90 percent response rate or higher, if you have received a five-star review at least 80 percent of the time, and if you’ve canceled a reservation only rarely or in extenuating circumstances, you are automatically elevated to “Superhost” status. That means you get a special logo on your site, your listing will be bumped way up in the rankings, you’ll get access to a