Everyone has opinions on Airbnb’s summer release. And I have been asked for mine a few times. So here’s my take, and I’ll stick to the two things that stood out to me. They’re not what you think.
First, the design. Airbnb has always been a design-forward company. In fact, they’ve invented some of the animation tech that now runs across the web. And now, they’ve brought back skeuomorphism (design that mimics real-world textures and forms), a design style that Jony Ive killed in 2013. It’s a small thing to change, but in the design community it changes everything (look forward to getting a new website proposal). I like it because it adds some flavor to the design. As Jobs once said about the button design on Macs “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
Hold on… Did you know that this is just an excerpt from the complete and free newsletter that is available here? Sent out once a week, original viewpoints, insights and interesting things to read.
Airbnb are usually ahead of the design curve. Much like Apple sparked the flat design wave a decade ago, this could very well spark a return to richer, more textured interfaces. Design always swings like a pendulum. It’s time to come back to something with character (and for the hotel industry that’s pretty good).
The second point that stood out is even more important: they’re still trying. Airbnb continues to release new things. Some might be successful, often they aren’t. And I love that. Public companies, by default, tend to optimize. They focus on what works, tweak around the edges, and squeeze out incremental growth. Booking is a great example, hyper focused on performance and efficiency. And it works for them. But Airbnb? They launch, iterate, fail, and then do it all over again. How many times have they launched experiences?
That spirit of experimentation is rarer than we think. Most of their ideas don’t take off, but that’s not the point. They’re one of the few public companies that still behave like a startup, with the kind of (mini) moon-shot ideas we typically associate with founders in their garage.
Their return to experiences and gig-economy services (they’re essentially a gig-economy company) may or may not succeed. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re still innovating. And, if the hospitality tech world needs anything right now, it’s this: the guts to experiment again.
Whether you’re a hotel brand, a startup, or a travel tech company—make something new. It might not work. That’s okay. Do it anyway.
PS: Big bet on redefining what it means “to Airbnb” – according to Gemini it currently means to list, offer, or rent out a property (such as a house, apartment, or room) for short-term stays through the Airbnb platform. Redefining it to mean doing some unspecified activity on Airbnb platform is a long shot. But with the right ad budget any word can be redefined.
Thanks for reading. Subscribe for free to receive new posts.
About me: I’m a fractional CMO for large travel technology companies helping turn them into industry leaders. I’m also the co-founder of 10minutes.news a hotel news media that is unsensational, factual and keeps hoteliers updated on the industry.
