January 31st, 2026

Good morning STR Report Community, and welcome to The STR Report’s Weekend Digest!

In today’s issue, you will find:

📱Weekend Digest: The Rental Resource Rundown

📬 See our collection of newsletters here: Prior Newsletters

☕ Good morning, STR Report Community!

Welcome back to The STR Report’s Weekend Digest — today we’re sharing another insightful podcast in our Rental Resource Rundown:

What 4.9-Rated Properties Do Differently (Based on Real Guest Reviews)

What happens when Airbnb announces that the new standard for professional hosts is 4.9 stars or above… and properties below that rating risk losing visibility, placement, and revenue?

In this episode of Get Paid For Your Pad, Kaye Putnam (Head of Marketing at Freewyld and Freewyld Foundry) sits down with Eric Moeller, CEO of Freewyld and Freewyld Foundry, to decode what separates 4.9-star portfolios from the rest of the market.

After analyzing hundreds of top-rated Airbnb listings with 4.9+ ratings, Kaye identified four core attributes that guests consistently call out in their reviews, and the data is clear: properties rated 4.9 or higher earn 15% more revenue than those rated 4.7 or 4.8.

Whether you manage 5 listings or 500, this episode gives you a complete breakdown of how to scale without sacrificing guest experience, how to maintain hotel-plus standards across large portfolios, and why the operators who win in 2026 will be the ones who optimize for connection instead of just efficiency. Eric shares real examples from Freewyld, their RPM clients managing hundreds of properties at 4.97, and the systems that make unreasonable hospitality scalable.

You will discover:

• Why properties rated 4.9 or above earn 15% more revenue on average

• What Brian Chesky announced at the Airbnb Host Summit about professional operators

• The four core attributes behind every 4.9-star portfolio

• How to create proactive communication strategies that build trust before problems arise

• Why "better than photos" accuracy drives five-star reviews

• How to implement hotel-plus cleanliness standards with sensory experiences

• Why the first 60 seconds after check-in determine guest perception

• How to solve problems within the "golden hour" before reviews suffer

• Why using cheap products limits your ability to charge premium rates

• How one client manages $20M in bookings across massive properties at 4.97

• Why maintenance breakdowns happen when teams stop reporting issues immediately

• How to personalize stays even when managing 100+ properties at scale
  

💡 Topics Covered:

• Airbnb 4.9 rating standard and platform changes

• The four core attributes of 4.9-star portfolios

• Unreasonable hospitality at scale

• Proactive communication vs reactive customer service

• Hotel-plus cleanliness and sensory design

• Maintenance systems and quality control

• Personalization strategies for large portfolios

• Cheap products vs premium guest experiences

• Problem-solving speed and guest retention

• CEO time allocation and delegation strategies

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