AIRBNB: The interviews
By: Maira Kokkoni
Tags: Airbnb, Ad Discovery Lab, Betty Tsakarestou, Advertising

In the “Introduction to Advertising and Public Relations” class, as brand ambassadors for Airbnb, my team and I were asked to make a presentation in which we had to show two interviews that were about Airbnb. Firstly, we interviewed an employee that is working for Airbnb and secondly, people that have used Airbnb’s accommodations. The goal of this task was about familiarizing ourselves with Airbnb and learn more things that would be useful for our project.

As we did not know anyone who works for Airbnb, it was a difficult task to find an employee willing to answer to our questions. After a lot of search, we came across Dimitris Protopappas who is the Regional Market Manager at Airbnb. Our team tried immediately to contact him via e-mail. Fortunately, we did not wait a lot of time for him to reply and he was glad to help us with our task.

Mister Protopappas started the conversation with seven words: worldly, adventurous, active, social, make friendships, trendy and happy. These seven words describe Airbnb’s personality. Airbnb’s accommodations are located in countries all over the world, giving someone the chance to meet new people, cultures in a totally fashionable way.

He also informed us about the four core values of the company. Dimitris Protopappas and his team prefer to hire people to cooperate with them who “believe so much in the mission” of their company so as to help effectively in its development. “Being a host”, which means that hospitality runs in your blood, is an important value for our interviewer, as well as “paying attention to every little detail”. Last but not least, he pointed out that the employees not only should own and learn from their mistakes, but also they should bring optimism to work. That is to say, “embrace the adventure”.

According to mister Protopappas, Airbnb is targeting the travelers that do not prefer staying in a hotel room and the hosts who are willing to rent out their places. Its purpose is to make people feel they can belong anywhere, feel like home. But why travelers prefer Airbnb’s accommodations rather than a hotel? People have the opportunity both to live like the locals and have more space and more amenities for less money, as well as flexibility as regards the time of departure. Protopappas’ goal for the future is to create all the more Airbnb accommodations in all countries and spread the reputation of the company all over the world.

On the one hand, this piece of information was useful enough for our project, but on the other hand, we would like to hear a customer’s point of view. A friend of us has experienced a lot Airbnb’s accommodations. Specifically, this person has used more than 15 times Airbnb and most of the times the rooms were satisfying and as expected. He always finds what is shown on the site. Once, he was not totally satisfied with his Airbnb experience, because the rooms did not include all the amenities that were agreed before. However, the problems that he faced were solved from the host on time.

Furthermore, when he was asked about the reason he uses Airbnb that often, he answered that it offers unforgettable experiences in beautiful and cheap places. Another positive element he mentioned is that anyone can invite people to create an Airbnb account so as the one who receives the invitation has 25 euro discount and the one who sends the invitation, 15 euro discount. He concluded by telling us that he would highly recommend it to others as Airbnb accepts anyone, makes you feel like home .



To sum up, Airbnb is an innovative brand with great values and practices. Taking into consideration the interviews, we came to the conclusion that they match each other a lot. “Anyone belongs anywhere”, that is a thing to remember, the interviewers advised our team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLGpjw4rgSs

Betty Tsakarestou Νεφέλη Παπαγιαννοπούλου Niki Despollari Maria Spanou