Airbnb beats competition in Ad Awareness and Current Customers but trails in other metrics
In many respects, 2024 was an excellent year for Airbnb in the US. It dominated its competition in advertising awareness as well as customer base. Moreover, it did so while trailing in other brand health metrics, which suggests some nuance to this success story.
The chart below compares Airbnb’s Advertising Awareness and Current Customers with three relevant competitors. In this piece, we look at: VRBO which, like Airbnb, is a platform for property owners to rent out their spaces; Booking.com, the other major online accommodation platform, with a focus on traditional hotel bookings; and Hilton, the leading hotel chain tracked by YouGov, which provides insights into the hospitality industry. Together, this group shows how leaders in different kinds of accommodation businesses stack up against each other.
Airbnb leads the competition in 2024 with an Ad Awareness score of 23.2%, meaning that 23.2% of Americans reported seeing an ad for the brand in the two weeks before they were asked. Much of this visibility can be credited to Airbnb’s big-budget ad campaigns, like the much-talked-about Icons . Icons offered experiential stays at novelty locations such as the X-mansion from the X-men or the house from Pixar’s Up. The brand also released a steady stream of animated ads underlining the strong points of renting from Airbnb compared to more traditional accommodations , as well as ads appealing to people to rent their properties out on Airbnb.
These ads seem to be having some effect because Airbnb also leads in Current Customers with 13.3% saying they’ve recently bought from the brand. This compares to 10.0% for both Booking.com and Hilton, meaning Airbnb is fully one third ahead of its nearest competition for this metric in 2024. It not an isolated event either, the platform has led the competition in Current Customers since 2021, when it overtook Marriott hotels.
Airbnb behind competition in other brand metrics
Despite dominance in Current Customers and Ad Awareness, Airbnb doesn’t lead in all areas. YouGov BrandIndex tracks a variety of Brand Health metrics that show the brand trailing its competition.
Buzz is a net metric which measures whether what people are hearing about the brand is, on balance, good or bad. Here, Airbnb scores 8.8 and is significantly behind Hilton’s 14.5 and Booking.com’s 12.0. This does not mean that people aren’t talking about Airbnb. In fact, more people are hearing about this brand by far. However, the brand’s Buzz may be suffering around negative press about unauthorized surveillance cams or hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine hidden in their accommodations.
Hilton and Booking.com also lead in Impression, a net metric of how people feel overall towards a brand. With a score of 44.0, Hilton trounces Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO. On the other hand, Booking.com has the edge in Value, which measures value-for-money, with a score of 19.4 compared to 18.1 for Hilton and 12.8 for Airbnb. VRBO trails on all metrics.
If one were only to see the reputational metrics, one might conclude that Airbnb is a significant but not dominant player in the holiday accommodation business. However, these net scores don’t tell the whole story. For years, Airbnb’s campaigns have been building awareness of the company and enticing more people to try it, leading to an enduring lead in customer base compared to hotel chains as well as to other rental platforms.
YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Scores in this article are based on sample sizes of approximately 20,000-30,000 between January 1, 2024 and December 3, 2024. Learn more about BrandIndex.