In this video, STR attorney and host advocate Enrico Schaefer examines Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s decision to list a room in his own home on Airbnb. Schaefer frames the move as a calculated marketing stunt aimed at reassuring current and prospective hosts, generating viral attention, and boosting Airbnb’s SEO through extensive media coverage and backlinks. He outlines three primary reasons the stunt should succeed: (1) it creates immediate viral traction, (2) it alleviates host fears by showing the CEO personally sharing his home with guests, and (3) it drives significant SEO benefits that help Airbnb outrank competitors like VRBO. Schaefer also contextualizes the stunt within broader market dynamics, noting a post‑COVID travel rebound, a global host campaign (“Made Possible by Host”), and the platform’s need to secure more host inventory for future demand spikes. Throughout, he balances praise for Chesky’s leadership with criticism of Airbnb’s opaque policies toward hosts, emphasizing his role as an attorney representing hosts and property managers and urging accountability and transparency. The video concludes by asking viewers to weigh in on whether the stunt is brilliant marketing or a hollow gesture.
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Today's video is going to blow you away. If you're in the STR game as an Airbnb or VRBO host, you're a platform provider for the community, you're an attorney who's representing either hosts or guests, I mean, check this out. Brian Chesky is the CEO of Airbnb, and you are going to be asked at the end of this video, do you think that Airbnb is brilliant in terms of its marketing, or do you think this is just a stunt that's not going to work? Check this video out and then leave a comment at the end of the video. Now, this video is being broadcast a bunch of bunch of channels across a bunch of channels. Go ahead and subscribe. Follow along. We've got great content for you. My name is Enrico Schaefer. I'm an STR attorney representing hosts and property managers on a variety of different issues. All right, Brian Chesky, CEO Airbnb. Let's see what Brian is up to. Let's see this. Latest marketing stunt where Brian Chesky— yes, Brian Chesky is going to be renting out a room in his house while he is there to guests. You can book a room in Brian Chesky's home while he's there. He'll make, he'll make cookies for you. He is going to share his kitchen with you and the rest of his house. You can book Brian Chesky's room in Brian Chesky's house. Check it out. That's right. This is Brian Chesky's place, his room that he's renting at his house where he says he will also be and bake you cookies on airbnb.com. This is brilliant. And I know you all understand that I bring a lot of arbitration cases against Airbnb. I'm also a host, but this might surprise you. I'm also a Brian Chesky fan. Of all the CEOs in Silicon Valley, I put him in the top 10% as to the, The way that he runs his company from a profitability, from an organizational standpoint, the way that he runs his company with his employees and managers and the rest, all A+. Now that doesn't mean he's not screwing hosts or guests along the way, and that doesn't mean he doesn't have challenges that shouldn't be pointed out. I, on behalf of Airbnb hosts, try and make Airbnb accountable and transparent, which they are definitely not, right? So you never really know why Airbnb does what they do to you. They say you're a partner, but then they say you have no rights. They say you're a partner, but then they can say they, they can do whatever they want to you for whatever reason they want and don't even offer you an explanation. They can encourage you to become a host, invest in those properties, take on those 6-figure, 7-figure mortgages, and then pull the rug out from under you with absolutely no notice or no explanation. So look, I love Airbnb. Sometimes I am not a fan of Airbnb. The goal here is to make Airbnb better. So Brian Chesky putting his place on Airbnb, A+ marketing move, because what are they trying to do? They're trying to convince hosts that it's safe. They're trying to convince hosts that being an Airbnb host is safe. Now it's a down market and hosts are complaining that they don't have bookings, that their calendars are open, that compared to last year the market demand is way down, but Airbnb Airbnb doesn't worry about that because what they're trying to do is build their platform for the future. They want to make sure that they have enough rooms available for when the market goes gangbusters like it did post-COVID, right? So they need to bring more hosts onto the platform.
Well, you know, I think that we probably will have a high-cost problem where there will probably be more guests coming to Airbnb than we'll have hosts for, because what we think is we think there's going to be a travel rebound coming that's unlike anything we've ever seen. So we are working our very, very hardest to get ready for the travel season. And we've just done a global host campaign, a global ad campaign called Made Possible by Host, which is not just a way to promote more people traveling on Airbnb, but I think it's going to work really well to attract more people to become hosts on Airbnb as well.
So let's take a look at this. Obviously, a couple of days later, Brian Chesky's place is no longer available. You'll see there's zero availability. for the next, you know, year into the future and even beyond, well into 2024. Everything is booked. So hey, by the way, if you happen to be one of the people who book, I'd love to hear about the experience. I'm sure Brian's a great host. Now another thing that's kind of interesting here is unlike other hosts, you can't actually see all these other reviews and the other 50 properties, the other properties which apparently garnered the 50 reviews for Brian. So interesting that you cannot actually, actually identify the reviews or the other listings by Brian. He must have a special part of the platform that's just for him, maybe a few others. But this is it, and you can see this is a great Little set of photos and it's basically marketing this one room, well put together. And apparently you have a shared space with him in his house and you're, you're literally going and staying with Brian Chesky. That's pretty amazing. So this is another example of just an A+ brilliant marketing program by Airbnb. They are really good at marketing and marketing to hosts is different than marketing to guests. And a lot of times they're having to choose hosts or guests. A lot of times hosts and guests are adverse to each other and Airbnb is having to prefer one and screw the other, right? And they're always balancing that depending on whether they want more hosts or want more guests. This ploy is designed at getting more hosts. And, uh, my guess is that it's going to work and it's going to work for 3 primary reasons. One, it's going to get a ton of traction. This thing is going to go viral as it already has. You can see it's sold out almost instantaneously. Number 2, and most importantly, it's going to make new people who are considering hosting and not only hosting a home where people are going to go stay, but home sharing, sharing their home with A guest. The biggest fear of people to get into the hosting game is, what's going to happen? Are these— who are these people who are coming into my home? So this hits all of the right notes and it says, I'm Brian Chesky. I'm going to be there with these people and I am going to host and hang with them. And you're going to, I'm sure, see tons of videos in the future with Brian and these guests. And it's all going to feel very safe. And it's going to feel like you can host too. Now the third reason why this is brilliant is because it also ties into bringing people onto the platform and SEO. So you can imagine the amount of traction that this got in, in the press, right? So when you do a search for Airbnb Brian Chesky listing on Airbnb to find his listing, Just a ton of content and SEO. So this 3rd item is really important because it used to be VRBO had better SEO in most, most places. And then Airbnb in like, I don't know what the year is, 2017, 2016, all of a sudden flipped the script. And then all of a sudden Airbnb in many markets comes back higher than VRBO and it wasn't even close before. VRBO was crushing Airbnb in SEO. And now Airbnb is crushing VRBO in many markets. So backlinks. And when is the last time you ever saw anything about VRBO in the news? I mean, they're almost nonexistent. They don't get those incoming links to the platform, which create the Google SEO that every online company needs to be thinking about. And oh, by the way, you as a host need to be thinking about because your listing with Airbnb, Your listing is critical. So what do you think? Would you rent Brian Chesky's home? Do you think this is just an amazing marketing stunt by Airbnb? Another amazing marketing stunt by Airbnb? Leave a comment below. Do you think that Airbnb is is moving towards bigger, more institutional companies who are hosting rather than the smaller hosts? Put a comment below. Do you think that Airbnb is going to be able to get more hosts as a result of this publicity stunt by, by Brian Chesky? Which, hey, he's got skin in the game, right? He's actually renting out his home. My name is attorney Enrico Schaefer. I represent STR hosts and property managers. We'll see you next time.
