Airbnb Celebrates Olympic Spirit With Physical / Virtual Experience Pivot For 5-Day Virtual Festival

With the 2020 Olympics postponed, International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) partner Airbnb and a team of athlete endorsers will host a five-day virtual summer festival featuring more than 100 Olympic and Paralympic experiences and Japan excursions.

While fans will have to wait until summer 2021 to watch their Olympic and Paralympic heroes compete in Tokyo, Airbnb is launching a virtual festival enabling then to share experiences with their favourite sports stars.

The online festival, timed to the original opening of Tokyo 2020 and promoted around the ‘one year to go’ mark before the start of next year’s rescheduled event, is based around an array of experiences hosted by the athletes themselves.

The five-day festival, hosted on a bespoke web-based home-sharing platform (https://www.airbnb.co.uk/s/experiences/olympics-online) is led by more than 100 Olympic and Paralympic athletes from 20 different countries, including Naomi Osaka, Yusra Mardini, Rui Hachimura and Lex Gillette.

The program offers experiences across multiple time zones and fans have two ways to participate: from 22 July they can book Zoom-hosted experiences directly on Airbnb, or they can watch select events for free on YouTube.

The full schedule is available on Airbnb’s site and app complete with dates and times for both options and highlights include:

A workout led by Paralympian Tatyana McFadden
Resilience and overcoming obstacles with Yusra Mardini (a Syrian swimmer and member of the first IOC Refugee team in 2016)
A cooking class with British sprint and hurdling athlete Colin Jackson
Beachside Zumba with retired Brazilian pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus
Quarantine training with Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka
A peek into sneaker culture with Japanese basketball player Rui Hachimura
A grand slam-inspired training regimen with Indian tennis player Sania Mirza
Returning to sport after motherhood with American track star Allyson Felix
A discussion on the role of positive thinking by Team GB paralympian Stephen Miller

The festival also seeks to shine the spotlight on the host country of Japan with various travel-themed experiences already available to book on Airbnb. For example, a partnership with the Shibuya City Tourism Association sees local hosts lead online activities including ‘A Tour of Historic Shibuya’ and ‘Teacense’, plus ‘Sake Secrets From Japan’s Oldest Brewery’, ‘Explore Kyoto Where Unique Old Gods Live’ and ‘Become a Ramen Expert’.

The event, officially called the ‘Summer Festival of Olympian and Paralympian Online Experiences’ opens on 24 July 24 and selected experiences will stream live or be replayed on the Airbnb and Olympic YouTube channels.

The promotion began with an online campaign which launched a week ahead of the festival itself with content running across all Airbnb channels with further social support from the IOC and the IPCir online channels.

View this post on Instagram

The world’s best athletes aren't heading to Tokyo this summer—they're coming to your home. Join a festival of interactive Olympian and Paralympian Online Experiences happening July 24-29. Connect with legendary medal-winners and future champions—including Allyson Felix, Jordy Smith, Naomi Osaka, Lex Gillette, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and Tony Hawk—as they share their favorite workouts, tips for staying motivated, and personal journeys to the Games. Limited spots for these Online Experiences are available to book now at the link in bio.

A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb) on Jul 22, 2020 at 6:56am PDT

View this post on Instagram

Join @pita_tofua and many other Olympians and Paralympians from around the world as they bring you into their homes for a unique set of experiences on Airbnb.

A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb) on Jul 23, 2020 at 5:18pm PDT

Former sprinter @mclewis1 explains how Worldwide Olympic Partner @Airbnb’s Online Experiences platform is giving her the opportunity to raise funds for her non-profit organisation, which benefits young female athletes #OlympianExperiences https://t.co/VQGKZCNNTW

— Olympics (@Olympics) July 16, 2020

An Online Experiences Festival curated and hosted by Olympic and Paralympic athletes.@Airbnb team up together with the IOC and the IPC. Bookings open on the 22 July.

More: https://t.co/XgZe40jSj8 pic.twitter.com/mFbJdgrmlZ

— Paralympic Games (@Paralympics) July 16, 2020

And the virtual experiences themselves took place through the last week of July.

“We launched Online Experiences in response to the crisis and the desire of our hosts to continue hosting and earning money. We onboarded many Olympian and Paralympian hosts as part of this,” said Catherine Powell, head of Airbnb Experiences.

“As we saw how our guests responded positively to having these close and personal experiences with athletes, it became clear with our Olympic partners that we should launch this festival at a time when the games should’ve happened.”

Powell added that the job of curating the festival program was fairly straightforward for Airbnb as so many athletes brought their own unique ideas to the table.

“They’ve brought immense diversity to the platform. We have a diversity of language, country and sport,” she added. “You can work out with them, cook with them, learn goal setting with them. They’ve been creative with what the experiences can be.”

“The festival is a great platform to unite and inspire the world in the spirit of friendship and solidarity this summer,” said IOC president Thomas Bach in a statement. “We are delighted to collaborate with Airbnb to provide innovative economic empowerment opportunities for Olympic and Paralympic athletes around the world.”

Andrew Parsons, president of the IPC, added: “The Summer Festival of Olympian and Paralympian Online Experiences celebrates this tenacity and gives para athletes a platform to share their stories to empower others, while also offering a new earning opportunity especially needed during these difficult times.”

Comment:

Another innovative example of a sponsor’s rapid strategic turnaround led by a pivot from the physical to the virtual experience.

The virtual festival is a replacement initiative for Airbnb’s planned programme of in-person experiences based around Tokyo 2020 which were to form the spearhead activation of its nine-year global sponsorship deal with IOC (which began in 2019).

But after the Covid-19 pandemic forced the IOC/IPC to postpone the Olympics/Paralympics back in March, Airbnb pivoted its Games-related experiences to online offerings from April (with the launch of a series of virtual experiences featuring Olympians such as Alistair Brownlee and Lauren Gibbs) and the brand also announced it would continue to support its team of athlete ambassadors financially.

The objective is not just to drive awareness of the brand’s Olympic/Paralympic partnership, but to expand its current ‘experience’ focused marketing strategy linking hosts and guests and it hopes that participating consumers to take away a sense of connection with the brand, the Games, the Olympic spirit and Japan.

Links:

Airbnb

https://www.airbnb.com

https://twitter.com/Airbnb

@Airbnb

https://www.youtube.com/user/Airbnb

https://www.facebook.com/airbnb

https://plus.google.com/+airbnb

https://www.pinterest.com/airbnb/

Tokyo 2020

https://tokyo2020.org/en/

https://www.youtube.com/tokyo2020