Travel should be unique and rewarding, but for most travelers, it has become commoditized and watered-down for the masses - an impersonal and inauthentic slog through the same places, the same activities and the same staged photos. Most travelers are mere tourists, visiting and viewing destinations at an arm’s—or a selfie stick’s—length.

Airbnb Trips are unique because they unlock places and cultures through the people that actually live there. An Airbnb Trip is riding the waves and sleeping under the stars with a local LA surfer, or making social impact with a women’s empowerment non-profit in Nairobi, or even living the way of the Samurai in Tokyo with a martial arts aficionado.

‘Community-powered’ became the inspiration for our launch idea in which hosts from destinations around the world would take travelers on live virtual Airbnb Trips, using social media to scale our content. Naturally, these weren’t like ordinary travel experiences.

Airbnb Founder & CEO, Brian Chesky, announced Trips at Airbnb Open, the brand’s live festival celebrating community-powered travel. As he shared these new bookable experiences, our video trailers showcased local hosts around the world – all broadcast on Facebook Live.

Immediately after his keynote, for the first time ever, we turned Airbnb’s Facebook Live feed into a first-of-its-kind community-powered broadcast network for our hosts to share more new Trips.

For 24 hours, they took over Airbnb’s channel. Powered by six different feeds, hosts brought fans to a chef’s culinary experience in Paris, a hip hop battle in Seoul and more. We promoted and simulcasted the live Trips experience from top travel publishers’ Facebook profiles, including Conde Nast Traveler.

To further our reach, we distributed even more Trips trailers across influential news outlets, via native seeding, and on top sites and social networks, including Snapchat Discover, all alongside our Trips ad campaign.

In just two weeks, our launch set a new record for Airbnb’s marketing performance. The campaign generated 1.3 million Trips related searches (measurable interest), 955,000 visits to the new Trips page on Airbnb’s site, and a 6% increase in Trips’ top-of-mind awareness among millennials.

Our intrepid content garnered 38 million video views, setting a new high for the brand in record time, and generated nearly 31,000 video shares. Trips PR coverage totalled an amazing 2,710 media hits.

Overall, we earned over 79 million impressions from 130 million total impressions, doubling Airbnb’s previous marketing record.