Part of a content project for Airbnb. Created for Product Content Strategy course, taught by Katrina Schwieterman at University of Washington.
1. Customer Walkthrough
Home Page
It is clear that the site is trying to sell stays, experiences, and adventures. Right underneath the logo and search bar, a simple question and 3 clean buttons show the website’s offering.
The main impression is “I can get an adventurous vacation on this site.” Airbnb creates this impression with colorful, fascinating and high-quality photos, which are convincing because the location, price and ratings, the most relevant information for customers, are all presented right below.
Search Results Page: stay
Half of the page is occupied by a map, which means I can check locations easily. I feel encouraged to use filters as they are large, framed, and placed on the top. Before clicking on any room option, I can see several important information such as price, rating, room type, numbers of guests, beds, and baths, whether there is wifi and kitchen, and multiple photos which I can scroll through without leaving the page. What’s particularly eye-catching is a heart (save to list) on the top-left and a ‘superhost’ badge. Airbnb is trying to promote the ‘superhost’ categorizing and the ‘save to list’ function. I can also see those I saved on the map. The site uses different font size and color to show information hierarchy.
By presenting certain selected details such as location, price and ratings on the search results page, Airbnb wants customers to find them important, or they think customers consider these important in order to make booking decisions.
Experiences page
There are two key words read in the title, “one-of-a-kind” and “locals”. Airbnb is trying to sell unique local experiences that are usually appealing to adventurous travelers. It uses high-quality photos with different styles and fonts to express the uniqueness and variety of offerings. The numbers of experiences shown underneath also indicate that Airbnb wants to highlight the large number of options customers can choose from.
Social media
On Facebook page, Airbnb uses short texts and let photos and videos do the talking. On Instagram, it features high-quality photos of unique homes. Aligning with its website, Airbnb draws attention with visual and aesthetic experiences.
Business Goal:
Airbnb is trying to sell unique, local, and adventurous experiences mainly with visual and aesthetically pleasing content.
2. Competitor Research: Booking.com
Similarities
Photos worldwide: Both sites use a great number of photos of destinations worldwide to spark interest in traveling.
Ratings: Both sites value ratings and numbers of reviews since those are present and eye-catching on search results page.
Filters: Both sites have a variety of filters to choose from.
Refer: Both sites offer refer rewards.
Differences
Mission: Booking.com’s mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. Uniqueness and locals are not stressed.
Focused on accommodations: Although Booking.com also offers tours and activities, accommodation is clearly its major service, since the home page shows search for accommodation as default. In addition, Booking.com offers flights, car rentals, and airport taxis information as well.
Work travelers: On the search bar there is a checkbox for work travelers, which is only one of the many filters on Airbnb, or on Airbnb for work, a separate site. Work travelers are a more important target audience for Booking.com than for Airbnb.
Voice and tone: In each accommodation page, the description on Booking.com uses a third-person, distant and objective tone, while descriptions on Airbnb tend to sound like the host “talking” to you.
Articles: On Booking.com homepage there is a section titled “Get inspiration for your next trip” which introduces travel articles. Airbnb homepage does not introduce articles.
Search results page UI: The search results page is significantly different. The map is minimized unless clicked on, only one photo is visible for each result, prices are not shown unless check-in dates are entered, the descriptions are longer and latest bookings are emphasized in red. Those differences show that Booking.com values popularity and descriptions more than actual location and prices.
Deals: While Airbnb don’t show any promotion, Booking.com’s home page shows “search today’s deals” and “subscribe to see secret deals”.
Performance
Worse:
Photos on Booking.com are not as consistent and high-quality as those on Airbnb.
Information hierarchy is rather unclear when there are so many colors, buttons, font styles and sizes.
Its Facebook page lack updates and is piled with complaining comments.
There is too much information at the same time. For instance, “nearby beaches” is likely irrelevant to many customers, and even if people are interested, the beaches aren’t clickable so they can’t find more information.
Better:
Variety: As the line between traditional hotels and alternative accommodation gets blurry, customers might search on multiple sites, and Booking.com clearly offers more options than Airbnb does since it covers both markets.
Urge: The red-colored “booked 3 times in the last 1 hour” or “Only 1 room left” makes customers feel the urgency to place a booking. On Airbnb, customers might browse around without feeling the urge to place an order. Some might decide not to book or look for options on other sites.
Business data:
While Airbnb might be considered the leader in alternative accommodation market, Booking.com is growing rapidly, with numbers of offering exceeding Airbnb’s, and its revenue of the 3rd quarter in 2018 roughly the same with Airbnb at around a billion US dollar. Since hosts are likely to put their housing on every major platform to maximize their profits, Airbnb is unlikely to have an advantage on unique offerings.
Specifically on mobile app, Airbnb has an average of 4.7 star review (879k) on Google Play with 50m+ downloads, while Booking.com has a 4.8 star review (2m) with 100m+ downloads. As for iOS app store, while both app has a 4.8 star rating, Booking.com has 794k ratings and Airbnb has 444k, showing that Booking.com is possibly leading in market size.
3. Audience Research
Users data:
Number: 150 million worldwide
Gender: 54% female, 46% male
Device: 50% of the traffic through mobile devices, and spend an average of 11 minutes and 31 seconds on the app
Age: 60% of all guests are millennials
Length of stay: guests stay on average 6.4 nights (compared to 3.9 for hotel guests), 2.4 times longer, and spend 2.3 times more money compared to typical tourists
88% of reservations are for groups of 2-4 people
Satisfaction: 90% of all guests have said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their stay
Top customer personas:
Demographic: 20s, single, college graduates
Personality: extrovert, open-minded, easygoing, outdoor person
Behavior: travel frequently (once a month), travel with friends, don’t like to stick to plans, like new experiences and meeting new friends, like to have unique adventures
User goals: easy and quick to search, clear and complete information, smooth communication with hosts, flexible arrangements, uniqueness, deeper experience instead of sightseeing
Pain points: safety, false information, hard to find, lack of reviews, unresponsive hosts, complicated communication with travel partners
4. Summary
Goal:
Airbnb business goal is to sell unique, local, and adventurous experiences and accommodations.
Audience:
Millennials who seek unique adventures with friends through simple process.
Competitors:
Booking.com is growing rapidly into the alternative accommodation market with a variety of options for different types of travelers. With a more distant, third-person voice, its biggest advantage is a wide array of offerings and detailed information, while its biggest disadvantages include the user interface that makes the process seem complicated, and the inconsistent and unclear brand image.
Key Opportunities:
Simple and clear interface, strong and appealing brand image, emphasize on human connections, aesthetically pleasing visual content
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