Airbnb called rival Vrbo 'desperate' for putting a sarcastic billboard outside its office

• Vrbo put a billboard outside Airbnb's San Francisco office saying it is "cooler" and "friendlier."
• Airbnb called the ad stunt "desperate" and said the campaign just gives Airbnb "more visibility."
• One advertising expert told BI that while confrontational ads can work, she isn't sure Vrbo's did.

Vacation rental company Vrbo took a swing at its main competitor, Airbnb, this month with a provocative billboard campaign.

It may not have worked.

"Think of us as Airbnb's hotter, cooler, friendlier, long-lost twin, that never has hosts," reads a sign outside Airbnb's headquarters in the South of Market, or SoMa, neighborhood of San Francisco.

Airbnb was not thrilled by the stunt. "Vrbo just spent millions on ads that appear to be as confused as they are desperate, even giving Airbnb more visibility than its own name," Airbnb said in a statement to Business Insider.

Vrbo, pronounced "ver-boh," stood by its claims. "Our latest work addresses common frustrations travelers associate with not only our competitor, but the entire vacation rental category," a Vrbo spokesperson said in a statement.

Airbnb commands a 44% market share of the global short-term-rental industry, dwarfing Vrbo's 9%, according to a 2024 estimate by travel news site Skift.

Creative director Ashley Rutstein told Business Insider she thought the campaign didn't have the right execution. While some underdog companies are able to gain publicity by poking fun at the major players, Rutstein thought Vrbo should've picked a different issues to address.

Vrbo also put ads in other cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas, and Chicago.

"Want a family-friendly villa you can't find on Airbnb?" read another sign, photographed near Times Square in New York City.

One user on X, formerly Twitter, who posted a photo of one of the billboards, said it was the "pettiest thing I've seen all month."

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky took the ads in stride, posting a screenshot of the billboards to his Instagram story with a laughing face emoji, Skift reported.

It's not the first time a competitor has tried to get under Airbnb's skin.

In July 2022, international hotel chain Hilton took aim at the short-term rental giant with an ad featuring a young family who checks into a spooky mansion, complete with creepy dolls and a horrifying checklist of chores.

"When you prefer a dream vacation over a rental nightmare, it matters where you stay," the voiceover said. The ad did not directly name Airbnb.

An advertising expert questions how effective Vrbo's ad strategy is

Confrontational marketing isn't inherently a bad strategy, said advertising expert Ashley Rutstein.

"The best ones punch up, where its coming from the underdog," said Rutstein, a creative director who's worked with brands like Jenny Craig and a content creator with 118,000 followers on TikTok.

Rutstein pointed to a recent swipe that prebiotic soda company Olipop took at its larger competitor, Poppi, after Poppi's Super Bowl stunt of sending vending machines to influencers received backlash.

In this case, however, she said Vrbo missed the mark. Travelers can easily find Airbnbs without a host on site, Rutstein pointed out, which makes the point of the San Francisco billboard moot. Other issues that competitors rag on Airbnb for, like chore lists, could've landed a bigger punch.

"They had the right idea, but not the right execution," she told Business Insider.

The key in confrontational marketing is to solve a problem for the customer, she added. Rutstein pointed to a 2024 Wendy's ad that featured Frosty trucks driving to McDonalds' locations, playing into a viral meme about McDonalds' ice cream machines often being out of service.

"That's an actual problem customers talk about all the time," Rutstein said. "So Wendy's shows how they'll solve that problem for customers."