The Airbnb Way

5 Leadership Lessons for Igniting Growth through Loyalty,

Community, and Belonging
Joseph A. Michelli

Recommendation
Five factors – belonging, trust, hospitality, empowerment and community
– drive Airbnb’s remarkable success, according to customer experience expert Joseph
A. Michelli. He reports that the company tries to encourage people to see one another as
trustworthy and to foster the concept that travelers can experience a sense of belonging
everywhere. To that end, he says, Airbnb wants to assist its hosts in offering service with
warmth and compassion. Michelli’s super positivity about the company can be a little
overwhelming, but he provides value for travelers seeking more information about
Airbnb and for executives who are passionate about customer service.

Take-Aways
 Airbnb accommodates millions of travelers worldwide. Five values drive
its success:
 “Belonging” – Airbnb wants people to feel as if they fit in wherever they are.
 “Trust” – The company encourages people to see others as trustworthy and
strives to discredit the notion that strangers bring hazards.
 “Hospitality” – Airbnb helps hosts offer service with warmth and compassion.
 “Empowerment” – Airbnb believes technology should enrich the customer
experience.
 “Community” – Airbnb fosters a sense of community and promotes service to
others.

Summary
Airbnb accommodates millions of travelers worldwide. Five values drive
its success.
Airbnb, an online service that enables travelers to book guest rooms in private homes or
to pay to stay in houses or apartments belonging to other people, tallied about 400
reservations, total, in 2008. By 2018, it was racking up some “400 bookings every two
minutes.” The company believes that five factors account for its success:

1. “Belonging” – Airbnb wants people to feel as if they fit in wherever they

are.

Creating a sense of belonging means fashioning situations in which people can

experience feeling at home anywhere. From the inception of Airbnb, its founders Joe
Gebbia, Nathan Blecharcyzk and Brian Chesky sought inspiration for how their
organization should function. They looked for insight from leaders in different fields to
help broaden their perspective beyond technology or customer recruitment.

“Immigration spread economic prosperity. Integration promoted diversity.

Innovation expands our horizons. And exploration is about the future of our species.
But what travel has done that is as important is support belonging.” (Chris Lehane,
SVP of  policy and communication, Airbnb)
Existentialist philosopher Paul Tillich (1886–1965) said that listening is the first
imperative of love. For Airbnb, listening means seeking opinions about its purpose from
within the organization and from hosts and guests.

In Simon Sinek’s TED Talk and best-selling book, Start with Why, he encourages

leaders to think about the “why” of their brands. Unfortunately, when company leaders
try to identify their organizations’ why, they tend to focus exclusively on their own ideas
and thoughts. By contrast, Airbnb’s founders wanted each part of its ecosystem to
identify its own whys. They asked employees, hosts and guests to participate in an
exercise that identified Airbnb’s reason for existence as a desire “to create a world where
anyone could belong anywhere.” Eventually, Airbnb’s mission became simply, “Belong
Anywhere.”

Airbnb’s senior managers pledged to broaden the scope of this fundamental but

profound idea. Their efforts included trying to eliminate “national wage gaps” and
committing to making their workforce more diverse to reflect local demographics. The
company encountered problems with its hosts regarding diversity. In 2015, Harvard
Business School researchers found that hosts accepted 16% fewer applications from
potential guests with “distinctively African-American names” than from guests with the
same profile but distinctively white names.

CEO Brian Chesky accepted responsibility for failing to address this problem quickly

enough. Subsequently, Airbnb pursued a series of planned steps to address host bias. It
sought the assistance of former US attorney general Eric Holder and of the former head
of the American Civil Liberties Union, Laura Murphy. In 2016, Airbnb began asking
all its hosts to sign an agreement to treat everyone equally. Uncooperative hosts are not
allowed to book guests through its service.
2. “Trust” – The company encourages people to see others as
trustworthy and strives to discredit the notion that strangers bring hazards.

Nick Shapiro supervises trust and safety at Airbnb. Before joining the company, he
worked at the CIA as deputy chief of staff, and he was a White House spokesperson for
President Barack Obama. Shapiro suggests that trust is the core of everything Airbnb
does.

“We intentionally designed our community to help earn and build trust within and
among our millions of hosts and guests in more than 191 countries worldwide.” (Nick
Shapiro, Airbnb global director of trust and safety)
Airbnb aims to gain trust by stressing the importance of three factors. First, it
emphasizes the safety of the people who use its service, both hosts and guests. Second, it
prioritizes transparent information and clear instructions about how to use its website.
And third, it provides customer support to help resolve complaints or conflicts when
something goes wrong.

The company also undertakes a number of steps to protect the personal information and
finances of its community of hosts and guests – for instance, it uses multifactor
authentication to verify the identity of hosts or guests when they log in from a new
computer. By applying sophisticated technology to evaluate the potential risk in every
room reservation, the company can highlight possibly hazardous situations.

Airbnb used background checks and feedback from its user community to revoke

bookings linked to a mid-2017 rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. It
continues to use multiple methods to detect people who identify themselves fraudulently
or try to defraud the Airbnb system.

Airbnb guides both guests and hosts in using practices and methods that promote
safety. For instance, it suggests that guests thoroughly read the feedback from a home’s
earlier guests to make sure the accommodations will suit them. Guests can use Airbnb’s
messaging tool to ask hosts questions before they book. The firm suggests that guests
use its platform for all their booking and payment transactions to protect their personal
and financial information.

3. “Hospitality” – Airbnb helps hosts offer service with warmth and

compassion.

Chesky says that when the company started operations, it didn’t really understand
hospitality. Its executives collaborated with its head of hospitality Chip Conley to draw
on the energy of millions of small-business entrepreneurs. Chesky points out that when
hosts invite customers into their homes, the hosts try to embody hospitality. When they
get to know their guests and come to understand their stories, these interactions can
result in long-term friendships.

Laura Chambers, the general manager of home hosts at Airbnb, says the company wants
its hosts to succeed, so it gives them ideas about hosting and about the business
transactions involved. It advocates that hosts work on delivering excellent service and
helps them shoot for five-star reviews. Airbnb asks hosts to respond promptly to guests’
requests and to try to fulfill their needs.

“Consumers have come to avoid businesses that can’t address their inquiries and needs
immediately.”
Host profiles on the Airbnb website provide information about how quickly, on average,
a host will respond after receiving a message from a guest. The profiles also provide data
on the host’s recent performance. These metrics guide potential guests to the most
diligent, respected hosts.

Airbnb tries to reduce the effort a customer must expend. For example, a host can
enable guests to make an instant booking, which means they don’t have to wait to
learn the availability of a home or whether the host approves their bookings. Leading
Airbnb hosts recognize that they must speak and act quickly to show their guests that
their needs come first. 

Brooke Ashley Johnson has stayed at several Airbnb properties. She liked most of them,
except one in Berlin. She and her husband had booked two nights, but when they
arrived, they found that the home had inadequate wireless connectivity. Johnson
needed Wi-Fi to finish a project for work. Their host also failed to respond to their issues
with the wireless and the faulty air conditioning.

Johnson reached out to Airbnb’s customer service, which help her and her husband get
out of their commitment to stay a second night. Johnson says that if Airbnb
hadn’t helped them, she might not have used it again. But considering how well
it handled the situation, she feels more loyalty to the company. Johnson reviewed the
host unfavorably, both to suggest that she should do more for her guests and to warn
other travelers.

4. “Empowerment” – Airbnb believes technology should enrich the

customer experience.

Airbnb leaders know they can’t rely on technology alone as the core of their strategy.
Instead, they believe their technology should enrich their customers’ experience. It
pushes back against the notion that businesses want to exploit communities rather than
assist them. The company works to foster community progress, preserve ecological
systems, and help those affected by natural disasters.

At Airbnb, “empowerment” means giving people the authority to enrich their

communities as they see fit. In 2015, the professional services consultancy
PricewaterhouseCoopers reported that participants in the sharing economy – such as
Airbnb hosts and guests – feel that by being part of this ecosystem, they are
gaining autonomy, saving money and developing closer relationships.

Airbnb charges no listing fees and allows hosts to set their own prices. The
company provides hosts with access to a “Smart Pricing” tool that calculates optimum
rooming fees according various factors, including demand, seasonality, location and
comparisons with similar listings.

“The core success of Airbnb is linked to how the founders crafted a convenient way for
people to find and share available spaces.”
Hosts keep 95% to 97% of the profits – without deductions for processing credit card
transactions or for the $1 million of insurance coverage the company provides. Airbnb
also covers the costs of marketing, payment processing and customer service support.

Airbnb recounts that in 2017, it expanded fastest in African-American, Latino, and other
minority communities. It reports that 62% of its hosts in the United States say that
hosting helps them defray their home expenses. In addition, Airbnb notes that 12% its
hosts in North America feel that Airbnb helped protect them from losing their homes
due to failure to pay their mortgage or rent.

5. “Community” – Airbnb fosters a sense of community and

promotes service to others.

In 2018, Chesky wrote a letter to the Airbnb community explaining his belief that the
company can help transform the world by promoting the concept of community in large
and small spaces. Each of the three founders demonstrated his commitment to social
change by affirming the Giving Pledge spearheaded by billionaires Warren Buffet
and Bill and Melinda Gates. The program calls on the richest families and individuals to
give the bulk of their fortunes to philanthropic causes.

Airbnb lobbied for changes in the laws that govern its ability to distribute equity. At
present, US Securities and Exchange Commission rules don’t allow companies to grant
equity to individuals who aren’t employees or investors. This prevents Airbnb from
granting corporate equity to its hosts. It says that its efforts to change such rules
demonstrates its willingness to share the financial gains that its hosts help generate.

“Airbnb leaders…focus both on the long-range sustainability of their business and the
importance of mitigating unintended negative environmental impacts.”
In 2013, Airbnb initiated its Global Citizenship Champion program, which
pays employees their salary for four hours of their time to work as volunteers in their
communities. In 2015, the company issued its Community Compact to set out the values
governing how it relates to its communities around the world, including its attitude
toward providing data, paying taxes and dealing with specific local issues.

Airbnb also responds to extreme human needs. In January 2017, President Donald

Trump issued an order which brought travel to the United States from Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Somalia and Sudan to a standstill for 90 days. The order prevented Syrian refugees from
entering the United States for four months. Airbnb pledged to provide housing to
affected refugees through its Open Homes program until their situations could be
resolved.
About the Author
Joseph Michelli, PhD, is a prolific best-selling author, speaker and organizational
consultant who focuses on the customer experience. His other books include Driven to
Delight, Leading the Starbucks Way, The Zappos Experience, Prescription for
Excellence and The New Gold Standard.