The Airbnb Guest Favorite badge is one of the most visible labels a listing can have. In this post we explain what it is, how often it’s updated and, using Homesberg’s data on 6.3 million Airbnb listings, what it actually takes to earn it.
What Is Airbnb Guest Favorite?
Guest Favorite is a badge on Airbnb listing pages that tells guests the home is one of the places guests love most. You’ll recognize it by the gold laurel icon next to the rating (in British English it reads “Guest favourite”). In Airbnb’s own words, Guest Favorites are based on “ratings, reviews, and reliability data from over half a billion trips” (Airbnb Help Center).
Top 1%, Top 5% and Top 10% Guest Favorites
On top of the badge, Airbnb can show one of 3 more labels:
- Top 1%
- Top 5%
- Top 10%
These labels show which percentile your listing falls into compared with other eligible homes. In our data, only 3% of Guest Favorites are in the top 1%, 11.6% are in the top 5% and 14.1% in the top 10%. The other 71% carry the badge without a percentile label.
Airbnb compares homes globally and/or within their country, so your label isn’t only about you. It also depends on how well the other homes in your market perform.
We can tell you how to become a Guest Favorite and share recommendations from our research. For the top labels, though, the quality of the listings around you matters too, and in some markets they can be quite hard to get.
When Is Guest Favorite Updated?
Guest Favorite is calculated every day. Superhost status is reviewed quarterly, but Guest Favorite is recalculated daily. If you get a bad review (or a good one), you can lose (or win) the badge the very next day.
When the badge changes, your ranking changes significantly too. You can track your Guest Favorite badge on Homesberg and see how it affects your ranking. Whenever you win or lose it, Homesberg will email you automatically.
Guest Favorite vs Superhost: What’s the Difference?
Guest Favorite and Superhost are often confused, but they work at different levels. Superhost is a status for the host account, while Guest Favorite is a badge each listing earns on its own:
 Guest Favorite |  Superhost | |
|---|---|---|
| Applies to | Each listing separately | The host account |
| Updated | Every day | Every 3 months |
| Reviews | 5+ in the past 4 years, 1+ in the past 2 years | 10+ stays (or 3 stays totaling 100+ nights) in the past year |
| Rating | No official minimum; 4.70+ in our data | 4.8+ overall |
| Reliability | Low host cancellations and quality issues | Under 1% cancellations, 90%+ response rate |
A host can be a Superhost and still have listings without the badge, and a listing can be a Guest Favorite even if its host isn’t a Superhost. In practice the two often go together; we look at how much in the Superhost section below.
Does the Guest Favorite Badge Matter?
Its biggest direct effect is the trust it gives guests. A guest is more likely to book your listing than the others.
Airbnb has shared the following figures based on its 2024 data:
- Guest Favorite listings accounted for 40% of all views on Airbnb globally during the second half of 2024.
- The average occupancy and conversion rates of listings with a Guest Favorite badge were significantly higher globally compared to listings without a Guest Favorite highlight.
Source: Airbnb, global data from the second half of 2024
We pay special attention to this badge for Homesberg customers. We track their Airbnb rankings regularly and optimize their prices accordingly. In our ranking data, nearly half (49%) of first-page search results are Guest Favorite listings. Want to see where your own listing shows up right now? Check it with our free Airbnb rank checker.
Our research suggests the difference comes less from the badge itself and more from the fact that the algorithm behind it works very similarly to Airbnb’s ranking algorithm. In other words, having the badge is a signal that you’re also doing well in Airbnb’s algorithm. And the better you do there, the better your prices can be optimized.
How Many Airbnb Listings Are Guest Favorites?
Based on its data from the second half of 2024, Airbnb said that about 20% of listings globally are Guest Favorites. Our current data shows a different picture. Out of roughly 6.3 million Airbnb listings worldwide with a minimum stay of 7 nights or less, 2.4 million, about 38%, have the Guest Favorite badge.
Airbnb Guest Favorite Criteria: What Our Data Shows
Unlike Superhost, Guest Favorite doesn’t have a published set of criteria. Airbnb shares some of them, but for several there are no exact values. Most likely that’s because there isn’t a fully deterministic algorithm behind it. At Homesberg, we used our Airbnb data to reverse-engineer how it works.
Number of Reviews
The most specific thing Airbnb tells us is actually the review count. A listing needs at least 5 reviews in the past 4 years, with at least 1 of them in the past 2 years. The top 10% label is also only shown for places with at least 1 review in the past 2 years.
Our data says exactly the same thing: if you don’t have 5 reviews, you can’t be a Guest Favorite. If your listing is new, Airbnb promotions can help you get those first bookings and reviews faster.
As the review count goes up, so does the Guest Favorite rate. More than 60% of listings with 100+ reviews are Guest Favorites, while only 36% of listings with 5–9 reviews are.
Among Guest Favorite listings, the median review count is 37. Overall, the more reviews you have, the better your chances. Once you’ve passed 10 reviews, the review count is most likely not what’s standing between you and Guest Favorite. And of course, it can’t be considered separately from your ratings.
Ratings
Apart from the review count, Airbnb hasn’t shared specific numbers, so we worked out the rest entirely from our own data.
The first thing we looked for was a minimum rating. Across about 4.8 million listings with 5+ reviews (the minimum to qualify), the practical minimum rating is 4.70. A handful of badged listings sit below it, but since the badge is recalculated daily, they will most likely lose it the next day.
The 4.70–4.79 range is one of the hardest places to be a Guest Favorite. Only 13% of listings there have the badge.
95% of listings rated 4.95–4.99 are Guest Favorites, but only 84% of listings rated 5.0 are. The main reason is that 5.0 listings usually have only a few reviews, and as we saw above, the badge gets harder to reach below a certain review count.
Looking at Guest Favorites on their own, about 76% have an average rating of 4.9 or higher.
Review Count × Rating: The Real Indicator
Review count and rating only tell the full story together, so we built a view that compares both at once. Around 90% or more of listings with 10+ reviews and a 4.95+ rating have the badge, and almost every listing with 100+ reviews and a 4.95+ rating has it.
This tells us that the biggest indicators for Guest Favorite are the review count and the average rating together.
Does Listing Optimization Matter?
According to our research, no. Airbnb itself doesn’t mention anything hosts can change on the listing page either. We analyzed the number of photos, description length and the number of amenities, and none of them made a meaningful difference between listings with the same rating.
The main feature where we did see a difference was the property type. Villas in particular are less likely to be Guest Favorites.
52.6% of villas are Guest Favorites. But among all listings with the same rating as villas (for example, exactly 4.93) and the same review group, 61.3% are. So a villa earns the badge about 14% less often than a regular listing with the same rating and review count (52.6 / 61.3 = 0.86).
In short, being a villa lowers your chances even at an equal rating. The likely reason is what the rating doesn’t capture: category ratings like value, cancellations and complaints. Guests expect more from large, expensive homes, so these criteria may be harder to meet.
The bottom line: your listing page doesn’t win you Guest Favorite directly. The ratings your guests give you do. The page’s job is to set the right expectations. Fifty photos that make your place look better than it is won’t earn you the badge; they’ll earn you a low accuracy rating. An honest, specific and complete listing, on the other hand, lays the groundwork for good ratings.
Superhosts Have a Clear Edge
68% of Guest Favorite listings are run by a Superhost. This can make it look like being a Superhost is what gets you the badge, but our view is that the two simply rely on similar criteria. If a host has one home and it’s a Guest Favorite, they’re most likely a Superhost already, and a Superhost needs a 4.8+ rating anyway. Because the two are correlated, you get this result.
That said, it isn’t only correlation. Even when we compare listings with the same rating, review count, country and property type, Superhost listings are Guest Favorites 4.7% more often than expected, while non-Superhost listings are 6.3% less often. So being a Superhost does help a little on its own.
Large Portfolios Are Less Likely to Be Guest Favorites
Among listings with a real chance at Guest Favorite (5+ reviews and a 4.70+ rating), a clear picture emerges. At the same rating and review count, hosts with small portfolios earn the badge more often, and the odds drop noticeably as portfolios grow.
The real gap shows up with large hosts who aren’t Superhosts. Hosts who manage 11 or more listings without Superhost status are about 24% less likely to be Guest Favorites than similar listings. For Superhosts with a single listing, the odds are 7% higher.
Host Cancellations and Quality Incidents Reported to Airbnb
Among homes with more than 100 reviews and an average rating above 4.95, a very small group (less than 1%) still doesn’t have the badge. We went through these listings one by one to find out why.
Most of them hadn’t received a review in a very long time, even though their calendars were open. The few remaining listings looked great in every way and still weren’t Guest Favorites.
This is most likely related to host cancellation rates or the quality incidents reported to customer service that Airbnb mentions in its articles. Since this information isn’t public, we can’t tell how much each one matters. Our take: these two factors do matter a little, but so few listings are affected that they don’t have a serious impact overall.
How to Get Guest Favorite on Airbnb: 6 Steps
- Meet the basic requirements (must-have). At least 5 reviews in the past 4 years, one of them in the past 2 years, no host cancellations and, based on our data, a 4.70+ overall rating. Fewer than 0.1% of Guest Favorites are rated below 4.70.
- Push your rating above 4.90 (recommended). 4.70 is only the floor: 13% of listings at 4.70–4.79 are Guest Favorites, against 85% at 4.90 and above. Protect your first reviews. With 5–9 reviews, a single 4-star review drops your odds from 71% to 26%.
- Watch your category ratings (recommended). A 5.0 listing without the badge usually has one weak category, like the 4.4 check-in rating we saw in one example. Fixing your weakest category works faster than pushing the overall rating.
- Keep the reviews coming (recommended). 99.6% of Guest Favorites got a review in the past 2 years, and the badge can disappear when bookings dry up. Aim for regular stays and politely remind guests to leave a review.
- Be a reliable host (recommended). Low cancellations and fast responses are what Airbnb watches. This is where Superhosts get their edge, and why large portfolios without Superhost status fall behind.
- Set the right expectations (recommended). More photos or amenities won’t earn you the badge. Describe your home honestly, list amenities specifically and keep value for money in mind, especially for villas and other large homes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the Airbnb Guest Favorite requirements?
Airbnb requires at least 5 reviews in the past 4 years, with at least 1 of them in the past 2 years, along with great ratings and a strong reliability record. In our data, almost no listing below a 4.70 overall rating has the badge.
How often is Guest Favorite updated?
Every day. You can win or lose the badge the day after you get a new review.
Why did my listing lose its Guest Favorite badge?
Because it’s recalculated daily, the most common reasons are a new low rating that pulls your average or a category rating down, no new reviews for a long time, or a host cancellation. Check your latest reviews and category ratings first.
What do top 1%, top 5% and top 10% mean on Airbnb?
They show where a Guest Favorite ranks among eligible listings, compared globally and/or within its country. In our data, 3% of Guest Favorites are labeled top 1%, 11.6% top 5% and 14.1% top 10%.
About This Research
All figures in this post come from Homesberg’s Airbnb data: listing pages scraped in September–October 2026 (listings with a minimum stay of 7 nights or less) and first-page search results tracked from April to September 2026. Airbnb’s own figures quoted above refer to 2024.
