Airbnb

The Airbnb logo centers on the “Belo” symbol, a distinctive mark combining the letter A, a location pin, a heart, and an abstracted person, representing the company’s mission of creating belonging anywhere. Designed by DesignStudio in 2014, this unified symbol replaced Airbnb’s previous script wordmark with a versatile icon that communicates hospitality, community, and place across cultures and languages, accompanied by a custom sans-serif typeface and vibrant color palette.

Logo History

Airbnb’s original logo featured a playful script wordmark with lowercase letters and a looped “b” that suggested friendliness and informality, aligning with the startup’s community-driven ethos. The 2014 rebrand introduced the Belo symbol, derived from combining multiple meaningful shapes into a single continuous line drawing that functions as both logo and user-generated content template. The accompanying “Airbnb Cereal” typeface, designed in collaboration with Dalton Maag, provides geometric clarity with rounded terminals that echo the Belo’s curves. This comprehensive rebrand reflected Airbnb’s evolution from a scrappy alternative lodging service to a global hospitality platform challenging traditional hotels, with the universal symbol supporting expansion into international markets and new services like Experiences and Adventures.

Design Philosophy

The Belo symbol succeeds through multilayered symbolism compressed into an elegant, memorable form that works at any size from app icons to building signage. The continuous line construction creates visual unity while the negative space reveals the overlapping meanings of location, love, and human connection central to Airbnb’s value proposition. The “Rausch Pink” primary color creates warmth and approachability while differentiating Airbnb from the blues and greens dominating travel and technology brands. The geometric typeface balances professionalism with friendliness through rounded letterforms and generous spacing, while the complete color palette provides flexibility for photography treatments, interface design, and marketplace category differentiation.

Brand Identity

Airbnb’s logo anchors a comprehensive design system that encourages hosts and communities to personalize and adapt the Belo symbol, creating millions of variations that maintain core recognition while celebrating local identity. The brand architecture extends across Airbnb Experiences, Airbnb Plus, Airbnb Luxe, and Airbnb for Work, with each tier incorporating the parent brand’s visual language while using typography, color, and photography to signal different service levels. The symbol appears consistently across the booking platform, mobile apps, host tools, and physical spaces from check-in lockboxes to welcome guides, creating a unified experience whether travelers stay in Tokyo apartments or Tuscany villas.

Cultural Impact

The Airbnb logo has become a global symbol of the sharing economy and alternative travel, appearing on millions of rental properties worldwide and representing a fundamental shift in how people experience destinations through local hosting rather than corporate hospitality. The Belo’s open-source nature and customization options spawned countless variations and parodies, demonstrating both the symbol’s cultural penetration and the risks of brand flexibility. As Airbnb grew to challenge traditional hotels and reshape urban housing markets, the friendly logo became a flashpoint in debates about tourism’s impact, short-term rental regulation, and neighborhood character, making it one of the most culturally significant and controversial brand symbols of the 2010s.