Airbnb is Running Its First Global TV Campaign in Five Years

If you haven't noticed, people are traveling less. A lot less. And yet Airbnb’s running its first global television campaign in five years.

Rewind: Early in the pandemic, travel ad spend (predictably) evaporated. With vaccinated vacations now in sight, those figures are creeping back up. Airbnb’s had a better year than most, but it’s relied much more on organic traffic than paid advertising throughout the pandemic.

Hosts with the most

Leading up to its inaugural public earnings call yesterday afternoon, Airbnb launched a sappy new campaign, “Made Possible by Hosts."

• Costing more than $5.7 million in the campaign’s first week, according to iSpot, the commercials are running across YouTube, social media, digital display banners, and TV.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said marketing is going to play a major role as the company aims to “educate” travelers on the importance of hosts, and recruit more hosts to the platform. But he also noted that Airbnb will never again spend as high a percentage of its revenue on marketing as it did in 2019.

So what? It might not spend like it used to, but Airbnb’s back. The rest of the travel industry will follow.