Airbnb’s Icons: Gimmick or Marketing Genius?

Airbnb recently launched a new category of experiences and stays called Icons that aims to tap into the power of pop culture.

So what can travelers truly expect from Icons? How successful will it be? Skift Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko discussed Airbnb's new product in this week’s Skift Travel Podcast.

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Icons Explained

Sarah Kopit: It's Airbnb's reentry into the Experiences space after quietly pulling back on it some time ago. It started with the Barbie Dream house that Airbnb temporarily set up last summer. You probably saw that somewhere on your social media feeds or in the media. It was wildly successful. He talked about that a lot. And so Airbnb decided to double down with more houses designed to fuse light art and pop culture.

First, let's listen to Chesky himself talk about it to set this up. He had just finished describing the popularity of the real life Barbie House. Here's a clip:

These experiences. They captured people's imagination and they allowed people to step into someone else's world. And at its best, this is what Airbnb does. And it's what we always have been about. So we asked ourselves, "What if we took this magic to the next level? What if we made these experiences even bigger? Did them all the time?" You could find them directly in the app.

Well, that is exactly what we've done. Because today we are introducing Icons. Icons are extraordinary experiences in the world's greatest icons in music, film, sports and more. Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination until now. And today, what I'm going to do right now is unveil the first 11 icons. So you ready? It starts ... with Up.

Wow. I love this audience.

Seth Borko: And that audience that he says he loves so much. You were a part of that audience, right, Sarah? He loves you.

Kopit: There you go. Yeah. So I was there. You know, it really was cool. We were talking about this before we started recording. I was a bit of a skeptic kind of going into it. I knew a little bit about what they were going to launch. But I don't know ... he really he sold me on it.

Like being there in that room. It really was impressive.

Borko: Do you think that he has ... tha