The smooth mansion within the hills overlooking Las Vegas will have been featured on MTV’s “Cribs.” However the spotlight of Aubrey Garza’s weekend keep there wasn’t the palatial rooms or the marble hearth. It used to be assembly her Airbnb host: Christina Aguilera.
“It just felt like a dream,” Ms. Garza, 26, mentioned. When she used to be rising up, her bed room used to be embellished with posters of the pop superstar. Ms. Garza had nabbed one of the crucial “once-in-a-lifetime” promotional remains that Airbnb has sometimes indexed in recent times.
The common, if uncommon, listings have integrated now not most effective personal hangouts with celebrities but additionally remains in a Barbie mansion modeled at the one from the accident film and a reproduction of Shrek’s swamp residing within the Scottish Highlands.
On Wednesday, Airbnb introduced that it used to be increasing stunt promotions like those underneath a pristine everlasting division known as “Icons,” that includes atypical and motivated partnerships with manufacturers and celebrities
At a information convention in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s well-known government, offered the inaugural slate of Icons listings.
It used to be headlined via a reproduction of the floating area from “Up,” the 2009 animated Pixar movie, balloons and all. With the support of a gigantic crane, the home can be suspended prime within the breeze over the Pristine Mexico barren region.
Requested whether or not the home, which doesn’t seem to be hooked up to the garden via pipes or wiring, had plumbing and electrical energy, the corporate mentioned it used to be “fully functional.” Requested for main points, the corporate mentioned the home ”is hooked up to a generator and alternative utilities that can be disconnected and reconnected sooner than and upcoming flight.”
Alternative listings come with a laze of the mansion from the “X-Males ‘97” cartoon, built to appear two-dimensional.
Only a few people have been able to stay in Airbnb’s earlier fantastical listings, however the corporate mentioned it anticipated more or less 4,000 consumers to retain remains in Icons listings in 2024.
Some other 10 listings are slated to progress up via the tip of the month. Reserving sessions will range. Dates for the “Up” area are detectable thru mid-September.
With Icons, Airbnb is hoping to capitalize at the luck that previous listings have accomplished as promotional gear, ready-made for Instagram selfies and attention-grabbing headlines, Mr. Chesky mentioned. (Sure, we fell for it.)
He pointed to the luck of Airbnb’s collaboration with Mattel utmost summer time, which introduced the Malibu DreamHouse to day forward of the leave of the blockbuster “Barbie” movie. The excitement alternative manufacturers.
“I think what they’ve seen is that these prior Icons have become cultural sensations, quite literally,” Mr. Chesky mentioned in a telephone interview.
The Barbie record were given two to 3 occasions as a lot press protection than when Airbnb went community in 2020, Mr. Chesky mentioned. The Shrek Swamp record used to be considered at the platform greater than 200 million occasions.
For an indication of what consumers can be expecting, the keep two-night keep that Ms. Garza gained via filing a reserving request for the Las Vegas mansion (“Hosted by Christina,” consistent with the record) previous this month offer a clue.
Ms. Garza, her used sister and two buddies chatted with Ms. Aguilera over beverages and dinner inside of an ornate mansion with glass partitions and prime ceilings, an infinity puddle with sublime deck chairs, a tall balcony with sweeping perspectives of the town, purple accented furniture have compatibility for a women weekend absconding. (The accommodation used to be separate; all Ms. Garza needed to pay for used to be the aviation there.)
For Airbnb, the payoff of such listings is in keeping up relevance and concurrently producing a decent wave of certain consideration that may support counter the detrimental press studies it has confronted over confidential prices, confidential cameras and the disruptive results that non permanent leases could have on communities
“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,” Mr. Chesky mentioned in a telephone interview. “So this keeps us top of mind and culturally relevant.”
Airbnb hopes the mission will support with world markets as neatly. One of the crucial listings introduced Wednesday is a weeklong keep onboard a excursion bus with Feid, a Colombian reggaeton artist common in Latin The united states. Some other contains an in a single day keep in Bharat hosted via the Bollywood superstar Janhvi Kapoor.
Regardless that Mr. Chesky expects Icons listings to attract hundreds of visitors, that determine represents a minuscule proportion of Airbnb’s 150 million customers. Nonetheless, he mentioned, the division represents the month of Airbnb.
“So this in of itself is not a stand-alone business, but it’s more than just any marketing promotion,” he mentioned. “It’s a gateway to Airbnb becoming more than a place to stay.”
