In 2021, Airbnb announced a permanent shift in its marketing strategy moving away from performance marketing like search ads and bidding, and investing more in brand marketing and public relations.
This decision followed significant cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the company reduced its total marketing spend by 58% in 2020 yet maintained 95% of its online traffic from the previous year.
CEO Brian Chesky described the shift as a defining moment for the company’s direction: “The pandemic showed us we could reduce marketing cost and still maintain most of our traffic. That was a big lesson.”
Key strategic changes:
– Reduced spend on performance marketing, down by $541 million from 2019
– Focus on long-term brand-building through storytelling and education
– Public relations became a top-of-funnel driver, generating over 500,000 media articles in 2020
Upsides:
– High brand recognition allowed for less reliance on paid acquisition
– Over 90 percent of Q4 2020 traffic was direct or unpaid
– Greater control over long-term brand perception and narrative
Downsides:
– Brand marketing is costly, and its effectiveness can be hard to measure
– Performance marketing still plays a critical role in converting high-intent users
– Gains in organic traffic partly came from lower competition during the travel industry downturn
SEO visibility weakened due to Google’s own travel product launches
The strategy may now have been adjusted because the travel market has become more competitive again.
But this case illustrates how a strong brand can reduce dependence on paid channels, but also highlights the risks of reducing performance marketing too far.
Note that as of 2025, Airbnb has increased its ad spend again, particularly in programmatic and international marketing to support new business ventures and growth in emerging markets, while continuing to prioritize brand-building.
