Brand Management Assignment Analyzing Core Branding Problem For Airbnb

Question

Task: COVID-19 has shifted consumer behavior and consumer spending around the world. In Australia, the travel and tourism industry has been strongly impacted with closures of state borders. Similar circumstances can be observed in many countries.

Airbnb has identified that they have impacted because of hosts fearing to rent out their homes and guests being fearful of renting an Airbnb. However, this is not enough to establish the overall the impact on the Airbnb brand to drive strategies for 2021 and beyond. However, it is evident that Airbnb is called to re-think their brand strategies around the world. Note that despite the pandemic, some of the known hotel brands appear to have maintained operations. This fall in sales for Airbnb may just be the beginning of many challenges for the company’s brand. Your company has been appointed to advise Airbnb about prioritizing their brand strategies.

For this brand management assignment, you are to: 1. Identify 1 core branding problems and provide roadmap to address the branding problems and provide a forecast for success and possible failures for 2021-2025.

Answer

Introduction to brand management assignment
In recent times of global expansion, it has been identified that the businessisoperating in a competitive environment.The brand promotion of a company is essential so that they can develop a strong relationship with the customers. It is essential to develop a stable financial condition within the company in order to ensure profiteven during the adverse global economic crises as identifiedduring the COVID 19. The concerned study shed lights on the identification of the marketing issue in the execution of branding measures by the business of Airbnb. Focus is also made on the identification of the roadmaps of implementing strategies to mitigate the issue with the properevaluation of possible success and failure attributes of adopted strategies by Airbnb.

Core branding problem for Airbnb
The business of Airbnb is effective in providingopportunities to the host to accommodate the guest by providing them with short term lodging as well as tourism relatedactivities.It is, however, essential to provide the personal information of the tourist as well as their payment details (Airbnb.co.in, 2020). In recent times, the brand has been suffering a huge loss. The core issue is the inefficient marketingabout the safety measures adopted for the customer’s hygiene that is in turnimpacting the customer’s engagement.Thebusiness of Airbnb is not much aware of digitalmarketing, and thus the business is losing their market hold. The lack of awarenessamong the tourist about the outstandingfacilitiesprovided by the company with full concernon tourist hygiene is determined to be the major impacting factor. As stated by Sofronov (2019), the company is failing to invest properly in the marking aspects. The brand is failing popularity aspects in the market of Australia. The other popular tourism brand such as Intro travel, Ultimate travel as well as G Adventures, are capturing the attention of the tourist. In the last two years, the business of Airbnb has to experience loss of 8.03% (Airbnb.co.in, 2020). Thelack of marketing initiatives about tourist hygiene has increased the fear among the host in giving the house for accommodation to the tourist.Thus, the execution of a proper road map is needed to address the issues so that the brand marketing can be done in an effective way.

Road map to address the issue

Figure 1: Factors for preparing a roads map
(Source: Laiand Li, 2016)

Inorder to enhance the marketing units of Airbnb, and introducing efficient aspects of digital markets measures, the development of a strong team is needed. The development of issues about strategic marketing is needed so that the idea of theuniquetourist treatment by Airbnb is executed to createawareness about hygiene and safety that the business is following among potential customers.In recent times, the use of social media marketing is in a huge buzz (Font and McCabe, 2017). Theuse of social sites like Instagram and Facebook to attract customers by posting safe travel stories of the travels during the adverse situation of COVID 19 is essential.Positive promotions will encourage others and thus elevates the company’s sales rate in the coming future (Palos-Sanchez et al., 2018).

The coordinative execution of the work is needed to identify the core issues of marketing as experienced by the business of Airbnb. The collection of the travel videos incorporating safety measures as per the COVID 19 protocolfrom the customers and using them as positive brand promotional strategies are considered to be helpful in attracting customers.

Forecast for success
The implication of the above-mentioned strategies of brand promotion is estimated to have the following success to the busies of Airbnb.

The increment in the profitmargin by 12% in the next five years
The elevation of customers satisfaction rate by 25% by the end of 2025
Improvement in the customerengagementleading to the elevation of sales rate by 10% in between 2021-2025

Possible failure for 2021-2025
In case the strategies are not able to fetch the profit as estimated, and the ideas fail. Theissues like arisen of rumoursabout the company are possible. Thefollowingare the risk that the business might have to an adverse situation:

Reduction in the satisfaction level of the customers leading to a reduction in sales rate
The business might lose that market cover and suffers financial losses.

Conclusion
The strategic introduction of the changes in the execution of brand promotion is needed. Theuse of smart marketing techniquesisconsidered to be helpful in promoting the brands at the global level and showcasing the positive hygiene measures adapted by the business of Airbnb. Theidentification of risk associated with the strategic implications is needed to ensure success to the business in both the long and short run.

Reference list
Airbnb.co.in (2020), About Us Available at https://www.airbnb.co.in/d/howairbnbworks [Accessed on 1.11.2020]

Font, X. and McCabe, S., 2017. Sustainability and marketing in tourism: Its contexts, paradoxes, approaches, challenges and potential. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(7), pp.869-883.

Han, W., McCabe, S., Wang, Y. and Chong, A.Y.L., 2018. Evaluating user-generated content in social media: an effective approach to encourage greater pro-environmental behaviour in tourism. brand management assignmentJournal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(4), pp.600-614.

Lai, K. and Li, X., 2016. Tourism destination image: Conceptual problems and definitional solutions. Journal of Travel Research, 55(8), pp.1065-1080.

Palos-Sanchez, P., Saura, J.R., Reyes-Menendez, A. and Esquivel, I.V., 2018.Users acceptance of location-based marketing apps in the tourism sector: an exploratory analysis. Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, 6(3), pp.258-270.

Sofronov, B., 2019. The Development of Marketing in Tourism Industry. Annals of SpiruHaret University.Economic Series, 19(1), pp.117-127.