When Sonjii Parris made plans to visit the nation’s capital for a friend’s birthday, the 26-year-old scrolled Airbnb for lodging options. She didn’t find a place to stay, but she stumbled across something else that grabbed her attention: the chance to bake muffins with Jenny Han, author of the bestselling book series turned streaming hit The Summer I Turned Pretty.
“ I really love baking and that’s what the experience was really all about,” Parris, a process improvement engineer who lives in Brooklyn, New York, said. “But because I did watch the show and I am a fan of the show, it just was a good mix of my interests.”
The other determining factor? The hour-long Airbnb “experience” cost only $25.
Since launching in 2008, Airbnb has grown into a global rental business that analysts expect to rake in over $12 billion in revenue in 2025. The company, which connects property owners with travelers looking for somewhere besides a hotel to stay, is so ubiquitous that its name is used as both a noun and a verb. Landlords have built entire careers on buying and “Airbnb-ing” properties, sometimes to the dismay of locals in metropolises like Barcelona, Mexico City and New York City.
Now, Airbnb is expanding its role in the hospitality industry. In May, the company announced that it would offer guests hotel-like services, such as laundry and spa treatments, and relaunch its cultural “experiences” offerings, including ones attached to celebrities and pop culture. Since announcing their revamp, the company has sold customers the chance to toss a football with NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, cosplay anime characters with rapper Megan Thee Stallion, stay at a woodsy retreat inspired by Wicked’s Elphaba and compete in a ping-pong tournament celebrating A24’s upcoming Timothée Chalamet-led film Marty Supreme.
These celebrity-led “experiences” build on the company’s past pop culture-related stays, which have included a chance to hang out with Sarah Jessica Parker at Carrie Bradshaw’s Sex and the City apartment in 2021, and a collaboration with Warner Bros. Pictures and Mattel that listed Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse on Airbnb during 2023’s Barbie-mania.
Airbnb’s celebrity-centered offerings cater to a growing appetite among younger consumers for proximity to their idols. The social media age has given new meaning to the term parasocial relationship, a one-sided emotional bond a fan develops with a celebrity or influencer. By paying Airbnb for access to a celebrity or their environment, a fan’s relationship to that star becomes slightly more reciprocal, at least for an afternoon.
An exclusive, celebrity-driven business strategy is what made Cameo—a website that lets people commission personalized video messages from pop culture figures, from Succession’s Brian Cox to wrestler Ric Flair—so popular, said Angeline Close Scheinbaum, a Clemson University professor who studies marketing and consumer behavior.
“It’s exactly now what we’re seeing with Airbnb,” Scheinbaum said. “Not only are you paying for the service, but in this case, it’s a novel, unique experience that no one else in the world can do. And so really what you’re selling is novelty, exclusivity and a bit of prestige.”
The expansion also taps into the growing market for eventized, in-person experiences, said Dan Wasiolek, senior equity analyst at Morningstar. “It’s a big opportunity for people to get into, and I think it makes sense for Airbnb,” Wasiolek said.
Despite facing softening travel demand in the U.S. earlier this year, Airbnb has had a strong showing so far in 2025. In the first nine months of the year, the company reported over 411 million nights and experience seats booked, compared to 380.5 million in the same period last year. The company’s third-quarter revenue climbed 10% year-over-year, while net income was flat — partially due to an annual investment of $200 million into services and experiences, the company said in a letter to shareholders.
Airbnb’s celebrity experiences have a limited number of spots available and are offered at a range of relatively affordable prices. Getting a makeover from Sabrina Carpenter’s glam team, for example, cost $50 a person, with proceeds going to Carpenter’s own charity.
So why is a travel company investing in celebrity and pop culture-focused experiences? Often, companies expand into the celebrity sector in hopes of having the charisma of famous people “rub off” on their brand, said Subimal Chatterjee, a professor at Binghamton University who studies consumer behavior and irrational decision making.
“This is all about giving fans a good time and hoping that they will have Airbnb at the top of their mind if and when they choose to rent,” Chatterjee said in an email. He’s skeptical of that strategy paying off. “My thinking is that Airbnb consumers are mostly thinking about value, or the bang for the buck, and celebrity endorsements will have little to do with the renters’ value-driven assessments of the properties,” he added.
But celebrity-centered experiences double as eyeball-grabbing campaigns that raise consumer awareness of Airbnb’s experiential offerings overall, Morningstar analyst Wasiolek said. Most of Airbnb’s revamped “experiences” aren’t led by celebrities, but by local tour guides and culture experts.
“Part of the campaign here is to build awareness that they’re offering this,” Wasiolek said. “Part of it is to get the free media, the free marketing. You get a bunch of people writing articles about this, and that gets the word out.”
Back in 2023, the Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse brought the company 13,000 press hits and over 250 million social media impressions, chief executive officer Brian Chesky told investors on an earnings call at the time. “To give you a sense of how much that is, that is twice — more than twice — as many impressions as were generated from our IPO,” Chesky said.
Parris, the Brooklyn-based engineer, said her positive experience baking with The Summer I Turned Pretty’s author changed her perspective on Airbnb. In the past, she’s only viewed it as a bookings app. Now, “if I’m home in Brooklyn and I want to do something and I don’t really know what to do or what’s out there, I can always check the ‘experiences,’” she said.
Local residents are a growing part of Airbnb’s “experiences” strategy. Almost half of the “experiences” booked during the company’s third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, were unattached to a stay.
But neither Airbnb’s experiences nor its revamped service offerings convinced Parris to book her stay in Washington, D.C. with the company. After signing up to bake muffins with Jenny Han, she closed the app and booked a hotel.