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huh > Most of our guests discover Airbnb organically, with approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb coming through direct or unpaid channels during the nine

huh > Most of our guests discover Airbnb organically, with approximately 91% of all traffic to Airbnb coming through direct or unpaid channels during the nine months ended September 30, 2020. Anyone know what % of traffic to Bookings and Expedia (and others) are paid vs unpaid? 91% unpaid seems really high, and I wonder if it's because Airbnb is so differentiated / people want to "Airbnb" a place (vs. "stay somewhere") edit: > Our hosts had 7.4 million available listings of homes and experiences as of September 30, 2020, of which 5.6 million were active listings. We consider a listing of a home or an experience to be an “active listing” if it is viewable on Airbnb and has been previously booked at least once on Airbnb IMO it's super sneaky to blend homes and experiences together

josephjrobison 6y ago
AirBnb took the opposite approach of Expedia, Booking, VRBO, etc. Instead of focusing on SEO and paid search like the incumbents, AirBnb focused on brand. Great breakdown by Casey Winters on the strategies - https://news.greylock.com/four-strategies-to-win-big-with-low-frequency-marketplaces-cf046883bc5c https://news.greylock.com/four-strategies-to-win-big-with-lo... - showing that there are different strategies, and not one absolute best.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  Great article. But I think that saying "AirBNB focused on brand" is almost literally a misinterpretation: "Brand is an extension of the Airbnb model, not its own strategy. If the product doesn’t deliver on a differentiated experience, brand building usually does not create loyalty." This post seems to say that AirBNB didn't just focus on brand, but they innovated on /somehow/ making booking UX "10x" (let's leave the ostensible 10 aside for a moment and just say "a lot" instead) better than incumbents. But that requires a durable product advantage, one that consistently creates a differentiated experience. It's more accurate to say that brand is a downstream side effect of the core product than a sole or primary focus.
hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Bookings and Expedia are way, way, way lower than that. Expedia has been complaining a lot in recent years how Google has been taking away a lot of their search traffic with in-results-page hotel listings. At one point in the past I heard Booking was the largest spender, worldwide, on Adwords.
- smueller1234 6y ago
  That's correct, Booking was the largest Adwords spender. I worked on their adwords integration then. Good fun. I wouldn't immediately consider the hotel metasearch products a problem for booking. It shifts traffic to different paid channels with different tradeoffs (eg. less fine grained control of spend if it's a revshare model). I ran the product development in marketing for a little while. Some years ago (ie. late in the game, largely due to politics), we started investing in cross channel attribution models to better direct spending. Disclosure: I no longer work for Booking, though. I do work for Google, but am in NO way involved in Ads or travel and an not trying to comment on the company's business.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > I wouldn't immediately consider the hotel metasearch products a problem for booking. Seems like Booking and Expedia disagree with you: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-of-the-biggest-tech-names-just-called-on-the-eu-to-step-up-antitrust-actions-against-google-11605204566 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-of-the-biggest-tech-n...
    - smueller1234 6y ago
      Ah, I'd be out of date then. Go back a few years and my info would've been authoritative. I was running product development for booking's marketing department then, including the meta search integration. Time flies!
raiyu 6y ago
When Covid hit and they had to cut advertising expenses from 2019 they didn't see as large of a drop in traffic as they expected based on ad spend. So they are definitely getting a tremendous amount of organic traffic because "Airbnb" became a verb like Google or Uber. Especially around the fast growing millennial sector which is very focused around experiences and travel.
- wholien 6y ago
  oh is that what happened? that's a pretty amazing "natural" experiment they ran. Definitely helps that Airbnb has become a verb - can't beat that.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Even if they would spend more on ads if Covid hadn't happened, it's still remarkable how great their numbers are with this little ad spend. It really speaks to the brand they have been able to build.
svbanker 6y ago
Airbnb also stopped performance marketing during COVID, so it is all unpaid for the past 8 months. But yes, Booking and Expedia rely much more on performance marketing, but Airbnb historically has paid a lot more for traffic. Experiences historically has been a very small # and $ amount so its not material. No need for them to break it out separately.
data_spy 6y ago
89% for Expedia, assuming you count search + direct. Airbnb is at 88% for the same breakdown according to Similarweb. However SimilarWeb has direct for Airbnb at 61.47% versus Expedia's 37.72%
Zenbit_UX 6y ago
They reached verb/noun status year ago so 90% isn't surprising. If your mom wants to rent out her guest house does she type "gig economy app that let's me rent out my place" or airbnb?

josephjrobison 6y ago

AirBnb took the opposite approach of Expedia, Booking, VRBO, etc. Instead of focusing on SEO and paid search like the incumbents, AirBnb focused on brand. Great breakdown by Casey Winters on the strategies - https://news.greylock.com/four-strategies-to-win-big-with-low-frequency-marketplaces-cf046883bc5c https://news.greylock.com/four-strategies-to-win-big-with-lo... - showing that there are different strategies, and not one absolute best.

yowlingcat 6y ago
Great article. But I think that saying "AirBNB focused on brand" is almost literally a misinterpretation: "Brand is an extension of the Airbnb model, not its own strategy. If the product doesn’t deliver on a differentiated experience, brand building usually does not create loyalty." This post seems to say that AirBNB didn't just focus on brand, but they innovated on /somehow/ making booking UX "10x" (let's leave the ostensible 10 aside for a moment and just say "a lot" instead) better than incumbents. But that requires a durable product advantage, one that consistently creates a differentiated experience. It's more accurate to say that brand is a downstream side effect of the core product than a sole or primary focus.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

Bookings and Expedia are way, way, way lower than that. Expedia has been complaining a lot in recent years how Google has been taking away a lot of their search traffic with in-results-page hotel listings. At one point in the past I heard Booking was the largest spender, worldwide, on Adwords.

smueller1234 6y ago
That's correct, Booking was the largest Adwords spender. I worked on their adwords integration then. Good fun. I wouldn't immediately consider the hotel metasearch products a problem for booking. It shifts traffic to different paid channels with different tradeoffs (eg. less fine grained control of spend if it's a revshare model). I ran the product development in marketing for a little while. Some years ago (ie. late in the game, largely due to politics), we started investing in cross channel attribution models to better direct spending. Disclosure: I no longer work for Booking, though. I do work for Google, but am in NO way involved in Ads or travel and an not trying to comment on the company's business.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > I wouldn't immediately consider the hotel metasearch products a problem for booking. Seems like Booking and Expedia disagree with you: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-of-the-biggest-tech-names-just-called-on-the-eu-to-step-up-antitrust-actions-against-google-11605204566 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/some-of-the-biggest-tech-n...
  - smueller1234 6y ago
    Ah, I'd be out of date then. Go back a few years and my info would've been authoritative. I was running product development for booking's marketing department then, including the meta search integration. Time flies!

raiyu 6y ago

When Covid hit and they had to cut advertising expenses from 2019 they didn't see as large of a drop in traffic as they expected based on ad spend. So they are definitely getting a tremendous amount of organic traffic because "Airbnb" became a verb like Google or Uber. Especially around the fast growing millennial sector which is very focused around experiences and travel.

wholien 6y ago
oh is that what happened? that's a pretty amazing "natural" experiment they ran. Definitely helps that Airbnb has become a verb - can't beat that.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  Even if they would spend more on ads if Covid hadn't happened, it's still remarkable how great their numbers are with this little ad spend. It really speaks to the brand they have been able to build.

svbanker 6y ago

Airbnb also stopped performance marketing during COVID, so it is all unpaid for the past 8 months. But yes, Booking and Expedia rely much more on performance marketing, but Airbnb historically has paid a lot more for traffic. Experiences historically has been a very small # and $ amount so its not material. No need for them to break it out separately.

data_spy 6y ago

89% for Expedia, assuming you count search + direct. Airbnb is at 88% for the same breakdown according to Similarweb. However SimilarWeb has direct for Airbnb at 61.47% versus Expedia's 37.72%

Zenbit_UX 6y ago

They reached verb/noun status year ago so 90% isn't surprising. If your mom wants to rent out her guest house does she type "gig economy app that let's me rent out my place" or airbnb?