Response-Time Scores and Where They Are Calculated

A response score is not a measure of how fast you type. It measures the gap between a guest message and your first reply, on the channel's clock.

Last updated: November 2, 2026

A response score is a stopwatch, not a report card. It measures the gap between the moment a guest message arrives and the moment your first reply lands, and the channel does the counting. Nothing about the quality of the answer enters the number. Once you accept that, the score becomes something you can work with instead of something that happens to you.

Key Takeaways

• It's elapsed time. Not tone, not accuracy, not whether the guest was satisfied.
• The clock starts at delivery. Not when you open the app, and not when the guest sends it in their own timezone.
• It stops at the first reply. A holding answer stops the clock and starts a promise, which are two different things.
• Each channel keeps its own clock. A score on one platform tells you nothing about another.
• The number has blind spots. It can't see the messages you never received, or the answers that were fast and wrong.

What the score measures

Take the simplest version. A guest sends a message. Some time later, you reply. The channel subtracts one timestamp from the other, and that gap goes into a calculation you can't see the inside of.

Two things follow. First, the score responds to elapsed time, so it rewards whoever sees the message soonest, not whoever answers best. Second, because the calculation belongs to the channel, the definition belongs to the channel too: what counts as a reply, whether weekends count, whether a reply in a different thread counts. Those details live in each platform's own help pages, and they differ. We won't quote a threshold here, because the wording that matters is the platform's, and it changes.

That's why comparing your score on one platform with your score on another is a category error. They're two stopwatches started and stopped by two different people. A number that looks worse on one channel may simply mean that channel counts differently.

What the score does tell you, reliably, is the shape of your own week. If the gap widens every Saturday, the problem is Saturday. If it widens in the evening, the problem is the evening. That's diagnostic information, and it's available without knowing the formula.

Where the clock starts and stops

The start is delivery. A message that arrives at eleven at night is already being timed while you're asleep, and there's nothing unfair about that; it's simply what a stopwatch does. Your local morning is not the clock's morning.

The stop is your first reply in that thread. Not the moment you read it. Not the moment you resolve the request. Not a note to yourself, and not a message sent to the guest on some other channel. A first reply that says "I'll check and come back to you before noon" stops the clock and creates a commitment, so write it only if you intend to keep it.

Then there's the part most hosts miss: the clock restarts. When the guest replies again, a new gap begins. A thread with five exchanges has five gaps, and the number you see is some summary of them. That's why a host can feel responsive all week and still watch a score slide, because one long silence in the middle of a thread can outweigh a dozen quick answers.

There's also an asymmetry worth naming. Your inbox is where messages arrive for the channel we connect, which is Airbnb; other channels keep their messages in their own tools, on their own clocks. localsbnb.com connects Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com to one calendar, and each channel's source rate and status sits beside the night. So the booking side is visible in one place while the message side is not. If you sell on four channels, you have four clocks whether or not you have four tabs open.

The practical consequence is boring and useful: the score is a measure of attention, not of effort. The host who checks twice a day at fixed times will beat the host who checks constantly on Tuesday and not at all on Sunday.

Three habits that move it

None of these is a trick, and none guarantees a number. They act on the only two variables the score can see: how soon a message is seen, and how soon the first reply goes out.

Fix two check windows. One in the morning, one in the evening, at times you can keep for a month. Add a third on the day a guest arrives, because that's when a message becomes urgent. A window you keep beats an intention you don't.

Reply first, solve second. The first reply doesn't have to contain the answer. It has to contain a time. "I've seen this, I'm checking with the cleaner, you'll hear from me by six" is a complete first reply, and it converts one long silence into one short gap plus one commitment you can keep.

End the day with an empty queue. Before you stop, look at the threads with no reply from you and answer them, even if the answer is "nothing yet". A queue of three unanswered threads left overnight becomes a queue of nine by Thursday, and the score records every one of them.

A saved reply sits inside these habits rather than replacing them. It saves typing, which helps the second habit. It doesn't help the first, because a template still needs somebody to press send, and a channel's clock doesn't care how the words were produced. If a guest asks something the template doesn't cover, answer the question and let the template go.

The habits are dull, which is why they hold. They also survive a change in how a channel defines its measure, because they act on the gap rather than on a rule you can't see. Anything that only works while the formula stays the same isn't a habit, it's a bet.

What the score cannot tell you

It can't tell you whether the answer was right. A reply in ninety seconds that gives the wrong door code scores better than a reply in two hours that solves the problem, and only one of those produces a good review.

It can't tell you about messages you never saw, because they were sent on a channel you don't check. That's the blind spot that matters most for a host selling on four platforms: the score on the channel you watch is the only one you'll ever see, and the channel you don't watch is where the silence is.

It can't tell you why a guest went quiet. Sometimes a fast reply ends a conversation because it answered the question. Sometimes it ends one because it was brisk enough to put somebody off. The number records the same gap either way.

And it can't be compared to anybody else's number, because the definitions differ and the guest mix differs. Use it the way you'd use a step counter: as a signal about your own pattern, not as a ranking of your worth as a host.

FAQ

Does a faster reply improve my ranking?

We can't give you a number for that, and neither can most articles that claim to. What's observable is the gap itself: it's measured, it's recorded, and it's the part you control. Work on the gap and let the platform decide what it does with it.

Is there a fixed time I have to reply within?

Each channel sets its own definition, and the wording lives in that channel's help pages rather than in a blog post. Read yours, note what counts as a reply, and then set your own windows inside it. If the platform's definition changes, your habit still works.

What about messages that arrive overnight?

They'll be timed overnight, because the clock doesn't sleep. The honest options are to check once before you stop for the night, or to accept a longer gap and staff the morning. What doesn't work is pretending the message arrived when you woke up.

A score is a stopwatch someone else is holding. localsbnb.com keeps the four channels on one calendar with each channel's rate and status beside the night, so the booking side sits in one view. The reply side is still a habit you build yourself, one check window at a time.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. How each platform defines and calculates a response measure is set by that platform and changes over time; confirm the current definition in its help pages before you plan around it.