Airbnb News

After the ugliest year in travel history, 4Q 2020 earnings and other more recent data points suggest that the industry has turned a corner and is beginning to recover.

In Skift's top travel stories this week, we looked at changes in Air France-KLM's pricing strategies, Vrbo's attempt to woo disgruntled Airbnb hosts, Nashville's tourism strategy, and the Delta's reversal and the state of Georgia's new voter suppression law.

The impact of Airbnb's new ad campaign seems to be underwhelming to date. But if the idea is to broaden awareness about hosting, Airbnb may be willing to play the long game.

Midway through 2020, Expedia Group and its Vrbo short-term rental unit took the high road by not wanting to appear to be taking advantage of host anger at Airbnb's early-pandemic refund policies. But when your new host recruitment plan targets "superhosts," it's clear those calculations are long gone.

Airbnb's stealthy financing and leadership of supposedly grassroots host clubs around the world to pursue the short-term rental giant's advocacy agenda may be an effective tactic, but it furthers a false narrative about the nature of the company, and it is a blotch on its reputation.

Airbnb will spend tens of millions of dollars, if not more, on its global advertising and referral campaigns to recruit more hosts, and that's probably a smart move. On the face of it, though, this proves that the company's host sign-up efforts are hardly organic, as one analyst alleged.

At a time when a travel operator like Expedia Group is shedding brands to become more focused, private equity firm Certares is investing in a broad array of travel assets. Divergent strategies for two very different companies. Certares' goal is likely to wrangle synergies while making a ton of money.

In our top travel stories this week, we took a Skift Deep Dive to find out why all-inclusive, luxury resorts will never be the same. We also explored post-pandemic recovery in the Philippines, Airbnb’s host dilemma, the much-anticipated electric aircraft, Hertz plans after bankruptcy, and more.

New data from AirDNA show that corporate hosts wield huge power on Airbnb's platform despite the fact that individual hosts make up more than 90 percent of hosting's ranks. Airbnb is empowering the growth of these property managers, but the result could be disenchanted hosts and guests.

Airbnb is going with huge brand marketing campaigns in 2021 to take hosting mainstream. But when travel recovers and rivals turn on their performance marketing on Google, will Airbnb de-prioritizing search engine marketing come back to haunt it?