How powerful & durable is the Airbnb brand?
The Airbnb brand is unquestionably a visionary force. The idea of 'belonging anywhere' has captured the imagination, and custom, of millions.
With brand being so critical in a travel industry otherwise dominated by google search, the question is, just how powerful is the Airbnb brand? Moreover, can it retain consumer loyalty and attract yet more consumer attention to continue to grow in the face of changing demand and competition?
A strong indicator of this brand is Airbnb's standout independence from Google. While its competitors rely on search engines, Airbnb enjoys a huge direct traffic advantage (67%), compared with Expedia and Booking.com on 46% and 41% respectively.
However, competitors’ marketing investment over the summer enabled them to grow traffic faster than Airbnb. When Airbnb cut marketing spend through the COVID-19 crisis, the percentage of traffic coming directly to Airbnb increased from 55% in April to 66% in August as customers that previously came through paid campaigns instead came directly to Airbnb. And even in the face of this marketing reduction, Airbnb still increased traffic by 159% over this period. By comparison, Booking.com remained reliant on marketing investment, so its direct traffic share shrunk from 43% to 40% but its total traffic increased by 327%.
While Booking.com looks to have the run on overall traffic, note that as this is a comparison of .com domains, and Airbnb alone employ different top level domains for different countries, for example .co.uk, this does not represent Airbnb's total traffic.