How Airbnb's aesthetic evolved after the pandemic «The home, not the location, has become the destination», said the company

Last year, many believed Airbnb would be killed by the pandemic, after a storm of cancelled bookings and the dismissal of 25% of employees. To attract customers, the company had focused on proximity tourism and on the exaltation of Mediterranean aesthetics – that is, all that imagery that imagines luxury as a return to nature, simple things and family situations, especially if near spectacular sea views, sun-kissed countryside and pergolas full of flowers. And so seaside towns, lawn breakfasts and beach chalets had replaced photos of immaculate city apartments furnished with minimalist Swedish furniture – an aesthetic that made the brand's Instagram profile look like an Ikea catalog. Today, a year after the difficult summer of 2020, there has been a new turning point: colorful villas in Costa Rica, stained glass windows that open wide over the Californian desert, explorer's tents among the rocks of Utah, designer bungalows immersed in Hawaiian nature, Vermont farms surrounded by grazing cows, mountain cottages and grandiose bamboo houses in the rainforest. Compared to last year, a sense of wanderlust and wonder has returned, of escapism from normality – if before Airbnb's Instagram resembled an Ikea catalog, now it looks like a Tumblr moodboard page.

In the post-pandemic world, the boundaries between traveling and living have been canceled, even the average duration of stays has slightly increased, but above all the domestic environment, becoming the real destination of the trip, has returned to being aspirational: being able to enjoy a spectacular view of the Colombian jungle from the top of a large balcony, visit an organic farm with designer bungalows, bathe in a pavilion open to the meadows of Australia, stroll through the rows of olive trees on the hills of Saturnia but also watch the sunset over the desert inside a transparent tent-dome or observe the northern lights in Iceland through a glass roof. The feeling of aesthetically satisfying calm, of domestic quiet, of unique experiences in contact with nature are the new luxury, which replaces the somewhat claustrophobic opulence of hotels with a more intimate, comfortable and personal type of experience.