Airbnb Announces Major Global Advertising Campaign to Tout Hosting

[Anonymous]

So this is interesting...

https://skift.com/2021/02/18/airbnb-announces-major-global-advertising-campaign-to-tout-hosting/

Thoughts?

[Emiel1]

I am not impressed by the videos

[Anonymous]

@Emiel1  Those videos are definitely ramming down hard on the Nostalgia button, but they didn't really connect to anything I relate to the experience of hosting. More than anything, they seemed to be playing on how much we all miss intimate contact and uncomplicated fun with all the people this pandemic has separated us from.

The travel industry is desperate for customers to forget about the pandemic and get back into spending our money moving our personal biomes around the planet. So we can definitely expect a lot of emotional propaganda aimed at nudging people into inessential travel even while every leading health advisory is fervently discouraging it. But the angle of accelerated host recruitment was a plot twist I didn't see coming.

Is this ethically defensible? 

[Melodie-And-John0]

Interesting @Anonymous ,  Seems like they are looking to revitalize the pool with fresh meat.   I think many of the properties that are available are not as desirable during a pandemic because they have lots of shared spaces.   Those were once the bread and butter of the industry but now folks are looking for private spaces.   Coincidently I got an invite from Airbnb

"You're invited to apply for the

Airbnb Ambassador Program

Hi Melodie And John, Thanks for being an Airbnb host. You have been identified as one of the best in your area, and we’d like to introduce you to the Airbnb Ambassador Program."

I checked out the program and it may be worth doing, Im thinking about it, Ive had lots of folks show interest in Lodging provision, I had never considered that it could be a part time income by itself.   Might be lucrative as long as I dont help create too much competition for Bearpath Lodging!   At least this type of programming fits into the original realm as Hosting resource, maybe they are refocusing resources in ways that will be better for us all, lets see, Stay well, JR

[Anonymous]

@Melodie-And-John0  This program is a blind spot for me - what is the compensation for participating?

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Anonymous ,  Supposedly it can pay anywhere from Forty to hundreds of dollars per according to the details of the new listing that an ambassadors name is referenced to after the first completed booking, ambassadors get 20% more for a referral than a non ambassador.  There seems to be a few ways to network and outreach I hadn't thought of  so that your not just trying to get your friends and neighbors to host.    JR

[Sarah977]

@Melodie-And-John0 I read that the ambassadors only get paid for signing up entire home listings. Definitely seems like Airbnb is trying push out home share hosts. You want to be party to that?

[Melodie-And-John0]

@Sarah977 , I don't know enough about it to say one way or another yet.  It actually makes sense that they would be actively recruiting types of places that are renting the best at this point.   That doesnt mean they are trying to get rid of shares, just means they need more places that are in higher demand.  

[Sarah977]

@Melodie-And-John0  But just as traditional hosts in areas where Airbnb has listed thousands of hotel rooms have found their listings get pushed to the bottom of search, and they now have a really hard time competing unless they drop their prices to ridiculous levels, the same will happen with a big push for more entire home listings.

I've always heard that there are far more listings than there are guests to fill them, so it doesn't make sense to me that they need more listings. What makes sense is that they are after starry-eyed newbies as more experienced hosts try to get the majority of bookings elsewhere after getting shafted too many times by Airbnb's customer diservice.

[Helen350]

One of the many reasons why I ignored MY invitation @Sarah977 ! (I'm strictly an amateur, old school, and I like it that way!)

[Ann72]

@Anonymous  Thoughts?  It's simple - Airbnb's research found that pandemic travelers preferred vacation homes to hotels, so they're looking for more hosts to list vacation homes with them.

There are plenty of people who would have loved to stay in home shares during the last year, but many weren't available during the pandemic, and many people just weren't traveling in the same way or as much as they used to.

Once more people are vaccinated, they'll try to rebuild old travel patterns, which will include home shares.

It's just data, and it's not a zero-sum game.  If more whole-home hosts sign up, it doesn't mean home-share hosts will do poorly.  It's like fashion or the stock market - in the immortal words of Heidi Klum, "One day you're in, and the next - you're out."  One day your stock is up and the next day it's down.  And the next day you're in again and your stock is up again.  Movement of markets and all that.

[Anonymous]

@Ann72  It will be interesting to see whether this ad campaign surgically targets markets with an undersupply of these hotly demanded vacation homes, or carpet-bombs the conventional markets where there's already an oversaturation of listings draining the housing supply. (Would you like that mixed metaphor shaken or stirred?)

[Ann72]

@Anonymous  LOL 😂

Huge marketing campaigns like this one tend not to be surgical, and vacation homes don't traditionally drain the local housing supply, so as usual, like Alfred E. Neuman, I think everything will be okay.

[Anonymous]

@Ann72 Actually I can really empathize with the disgruntled neighbors in the thousands of Berlin apartment buildings that have gotten stuck with an Airbnb unit in their midst. The actual causes of the housing shortage are too various and complex to pin down on vacation rentals, but it would be incredibly tone-deaf for Airbnb to broadcast its host recruitment drive in this city right now. Especially after all the money they've spent unsuccessfully lobbying the senate against regulation.

One thing I find a little capital-s Special about these ads is how narrowly they've profiled their target audience - people whose age group calcified their music taste in the 70s and early 80s (as in, the ones who might actually own houses now), seen through the Instagram-filtered gaze of their offspring. No doubt this plays very well in the class dynamic of the Bay Area, but people inside that bubble tend to overestimate how universal their cultural totems are.

[Ann72]

@Anonymous  I don't equate vacation houses with Berlin apartments, my own cultural bias.  Obvs the flood of short-term lets in places with housing shortages is a real concern, and I support for instance the strict limits on New York hosting.  (The pandemic's crushing effect on New York may increase affordable housing, but that's another topic.)

Oh good Lord yes, I didn't like the ads, the first one showcased a very blond family, tone deaf alone in an era of diversity-consciousness.  As for music, they, like independent filmmakers, use the music they can afford.  I found it excruciating (just as I find excruciating the music in most independent films), but I've had to deal with ASCAP too often to think any of it was anyone's first choice.

Their data showed that vacation houses did well in the pandemic.  They made an ad campaign to attract more hosts with vacation houses.  They attempted to show that the vacation houses didn't have to be super luxe or private or exclusive or fancy - just places where people could go and get away from real life and relax.  It's all just data points.  Nothing to get too exercised about.  I was married to a network television exec for 30 years and recognize the research department's hand when I see it.