Does Airbnb's Brand Promise Actually Match What Customers Want?

A while back I did a brand audit on Airbnb, looking specifically at their pre-purchase touchpoints and brand image. The question I was trying to answer was simple: is what Airbnb says about itself actually consistent with what their customers think and want from them. I'm revisiting it here because the gap I found is one I think is genuinely useful for anyone working in brand or marketing to sit with, not just an Airbnb specific observation.

To set the scene quickly for anyone without the context: Airbnb is the short and long term homestay booking platform, the alternative to hotels. Their mission is built around the idea that anyone can belong anywhere, and a lot of their content reflects that.

Looking at Airbnb's company created content, the brand wants to position itself as a cultivator of memories. The brand stories sharing real customer experiences, the "Get an Airbnb" video series, the Takashi's Room ad with its nostalgic photo collage of a couple staying in Kyoto, all of it tells the same kind of story. They're not selling a room, they're selling a sense of belonging and lasting memories from your stay. Across the touch points I audited, this was consistent. Tactically it's a tight brand expression, using TVCs and digital content that all reinforce the same promise.

What the brand says versus what people actually said

Alongside the brand audit, I did a small consumer perception audit too, interviews with people in the target demographic, a review of online review forums, and a literature review pulling from existing research on Airbnb usage. The pattern that came back had almost nothing to do with belonging or memories.

It was cost. Plainly, repeatedly, cost.

A 22 year old based in Sydney finds Airbnb cheaper than booking a hotel, and since she's still young, when booking trips with friends it makes more sense to chase discounts and book one house with more rooms than multiple hotel rooms. A 43 year old based in Luanda who travels with her husband and two daughters finds it easier to manage rooming if an entire house is booked, and values the sense of privacy and autonomy it gives her. A 44 year old based in Sydney finds the prices more affordable and worth it, and likes having more choice in food and the opportunity to explore local places when travelling. None of these read as "this brand gave me a story I'll remember forever." They read as logistics and budget, with a side of appreciation for the freedom that comes with it.

The literature backed this up too. Guttentag et al's 2018 study, which surveyed over 800 Airbnb users, found that while there were distinct motivation based segments within the audience, the overarching motivator across the board was cost.

So there's a clear tension here. Airbnb is communicating meaning, and a meaningful chunk of its market is shopping on value. The intended brand image and the received one aren't quite pointing in the same direction.

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Why this doesn't actually hurt the brand

It would be easy to read that gap as a failure, a brand strategy that missed its audience. But I don't think that's the right read, and the rest of the research backs that up.

The online review forums were genuinely rough, sitting under 1.5 out of 5 across Consumer Affairs, Trustpilot and Product Review, with recurring complaints about random booking cancellations, a troubling refund and support process, and dissatisfying host behaviour and living conditions. But interestingly, the critique was largely placed on the hosts and the platform's vetting measures, not on the company's brand or its messaging. It's worth flagging as a limitation too that review forums attract customers who have something, usually negative, to say, rather than customers who had a more mundane experience, so this isn't a fully holistic view of the average guest.

Mao and Lyu's 2017 research into why travellers use Airbnb again found that perceived value in staying in a shared space within a sharing economy was the main driving factor behind repurchase, not whether the marketing lined up with the lived experience.

So even though there's a disconnect between Airbnb's intended messaging and how consumers actually perceive the brand, this doesn't seem to negatively affect the brand in retaining its existing customers. The willingness of travellers to keep rebooking Airbnb stays suggests there's still a strong enough consistency between what the brand promises and what people actually experience once they're in it.

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The takeaway for brand work

This is the bit I think is useful beyond Airbnb specifically. Brand consistency doesn't necessarily need the customer's stated motivation to match the brand's message at the point of purchase. What it needs is for the actual experience to not contradict the promise once the customer is inside it.

Airbnb can sell belonging and let people book it for the cost savings, because nothing about an actual stay tells the guest they were lied to. The story isn't why most people came in the door, but it's also not why they'd leave unhappy. It can be argued that because the brand expression is rooted in something true about the product, even if it's not the main reason people buy, it can still maintain that dominance in customer preference.

If you're ever auditing a brand's pre-purchase content against its actual customer base and you find a similar gap, I don't think the question is how to fix the messaging so it matches what people say they want. I think the better question is whether the experience on the other side of the purchase holds up the promise enough that the gap doesn't end up mattering. For Airbnb, right now, it does

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This is adapted from a brand and consumer perception audit I conducted in 2024, including a review of Airbnb's company created touchpoints, primary interviews with target segment travellers, review platform sentiment, and existing academic research on Airbnb purchase motivation (Guttentag et al. 2018; Mao & Lyu 2017).

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