Analyzing Airbnb's e-Marketing Strategies

Critically analyze Airbnb’s eMarketing strategies and marketing-mix targeting New Zealand and Australasian market.

instruction:

Individual oral presentation: Present a 13 to 15-mininutes oral presentation supported with PowerPoint Slides based on your analysis of the Airbnb case study and your researched company in Assessment 1 of this course. Read the case study about Airbnb on page 8 and link your research results gathered from completing your Assessment 1 of this course to complete all the requirements of this task.



Requirements and Guidelines:
Investigate further based on the above mentioned case study of Airbnb. The following requirements will guide you in preparing your oral presentation:
1.Critically analyse Airbnb’s eMarketing strategies and marketing-mix targeting New Zealand and Australasian market.
2.Evaluate how successfully (or unsuccessfully) that Airbnb’s eMarketing strategies for its global markets around the world, and justify your evaluation with evidence and examples. Critically think about how well Airbnb has done internationally, and what it did not do so well validating your answers with credible sources.
3.Compare and contrast Airbnb’s case against the company you have researched in your Assessment 1 in terms of similarities and differences of their e-Marketing strategies. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of their e-Marketing campaigns, and the strengths and weaknesses of their adopted Interactive Marketing Communication channels.
4.Propose solutions or recommendations that would help these two companies (Airbnb and your researched company) to improve their e-Marketing practice. Consider recent technology trends that will impact or influence the eMarketing strategies for your chosen companies.
5.Length of Presentation: 13 to 15 minutes. This is an individual presentation and it is your responsibility to double check the classroom setting and the availability of the equipment in advance in order to avoid any technical failure. Refer to marking rubric starting from page 13 onwards for the details of marking guideline.

Case study of Airbnb:

If you are travelling to a new place today and you are asked to book an accommodation, where would you go to search for information? I believe one of your possible answers will involve an online hospitality solution, such as Airbnb. Airbnb was founded by 3 guys when from renting Air Mattresses to a 10 Billion Dollar company in 10 years, its presence as an online hospitality service and rental services provider has brought tuff challenges to the traditional hospitality industry. It started as a San Francisco-based online website in 2008 and now has become one of the most well-known online hospitality provider with more than four million listings in 65,000 cities across 191 countries (Dickinson, 2018). The history about Airbnb is well illustrated in Figure 1 below (Vital).


Figure 1: How Airbnb Started
Prior to the establishment of Airbnb, there were a few other players in the market who provide catalogue listings and one of the most well-known is Craigslist. Initially when Airbnb enters to the market, they successfully managed to drive the online traffic and listings to their own site from Craigslist. Each time a listing was made that fitted in the category of Airbnb, the founders of Airbnb Joe and Brian would email the home owner and ask if they would like to list on Airbnb. Later the word would spread from one owner to another about Airbnb. Based on the success of this emailing strategy, they further developed an automatic emailing process to reach a bigger scale of audience.

The entrance of Airbnb into New Zealand market has brought a big impact to the local hospitality service providers both online and offline. New Zealand has local-owned websites such as  Bookabatch and holidayhouse.co.nz, also has local-owned and international-owned motel/chains, and all of them are facing the similar challenges of competing with Airbnb in the same market.

Like many new technologies, Airbnb was met with resistance when it got introduced to New