Airbnb recreates house from Up, launches series of iconic film stays

Only a few people have been able to stay in Airbnb’s previous fantastical listings, but the company said it expected roughly 4000 customers to book stays in Icons listings in 2024.

Another 10 listings are slated to go up by the end of the year. Booking periods will vary. Dates for the Up house are open through mid-September.

With Icons, Airbnb is hoping to capitalise on the success that earlier listings have achieved as promotional tools, ready-made for Instagram selfies and eye-catching headlines, Chesky said. (Yes, we fell for it.)

He pointed to the success of Airbnb’s collaboration with Mattel over the summer, which brought the Malibu DreamHouse to life ahead of the release of the blockbuster Barbie film. The buzz interested other brands.

“I think what they’ve seen is that these prior Icons have become cultural sensations, quite literally,” Chesky said in a phone interview.

The Barbie listing got two to three times as much press coverage as when Airbnb went public in 2020, Chesky said. The Shrek Swamp listing was viewed on the platform more than 200 million times.

For a sign of what customers can expect, the two-night stay that Garza won by submitting a booking request for the Las Vegas mansion (“Hosted by Christina,” according to the listing) earlier this year offers a clue.

Garza, her older sister and two friends chatted with Aguilera over drinks and dinner inside an ornate mansion with glass walls and high ceilings, an infinity pool with chic deck chairs, a lofty balcony with sweeping views of the city and pink-accented furnishings fit for a girls weekend getaway. (The lodging was free; all Garza had to pay for was the flight there.)

For Airbnb, the payoff of such listings is in maintaining relevance and simultaneously generating a reliable stream of positive attention that can help counter the negative press reports it has faced over hidden costs, hidden cameras and the disruptive effects that short-term rentals can have on communities.

Sean Hennessy, an associate professor at the Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality at New York University, said the Icons initiative appeared to be an effort by Airbnb to “change the narrative” and rekindle the allure it enjoyed in its early days, when it became extremely popular in a short period by offering travellers an alternative to staying at a hotel.

“Most people only ever open our app once or twice a year, and we’ve got to battle to make sure they think of us every single year,” Chesky said in a phone interview. “So this keeps us top of mind and culturally relevant.”

Airbnb hopes the project will help with international markets as well. One of the listings announced Wednesday is a weeklong stay aboard a tour bus with Feid, a Colombian reggaeton artist popular in Latin America. Another includes an overnight stay in India hosted by Bollywood star Janhvi Kapoor.

Though Chesky expects Icons listings to draw thousands of guests, that figure represents a minuscule share of Airbnb’s 150 million users. Still, he said, the category represents the future of Airbnb.

“So this in of itself is not a stand-alone business, but it’s more than just any marketing promotion,” he said. “It’s a gateway to Airbnb becoming more than a place to stay.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.