Airbnb "Belong Anywhere": the rebrand that scaled with the company
In July 2014, Airbnb retired the “Airbed & Breakfast” wordmark, launched a new symbol called the Bélo, and adopted “Belong Anywhere” as its tagline. The point was to stop competing with hotels on price and convenience and start competing on something hotels can’t copy — the feeling of being somewhere that’s not a hotel. The rebrand carried the company from 800,000 listings to more than 8 million over the next decade without needing another reset.
- Story: In July 2014 Airbnb retired the "Airbed & Breakfast" wordmark, launched a new symbol called the Bélo, and adopted "Belong Anywhere" as the brand tagline. The point was to stop competing with hotels on price-and-convenience grounds and start competing on something hotels can't copy: the feeling of being somewhere that's not a hotel.
- Why it matters: A lot of rebrands happen because the marketing team wants new work. This one happened because the company had outgrown its name. The rebrand let Airbnb scale from about 800,000 listings to more than 8 million over the next decade without confusing anyone about what the brand was.
- Takeaway: Rebrand when the company has outgrown the old positioning, not when the marketing team wants something new to do.
- Takeaway: Build a symbol (not just a wordmark) so the brand has a long-tail visual asset to use across surfaces.
- Takeaway: Get internal alignment first. DesignStudio spent about a year inside Airbnb before launch. That's where the rebrand actually lived.
Belong Anywhere — the four-step story
Belong Anywhere at a glance
Quick facts
Where Airbnb was in 2013
By late 2013, Airbnb had scaled to roughly 800,000 listings across more than 190 countries. The product was working. But the brand was still presenting itself as Airbed & Breakfast, with a wordmark that fit a small Y Combinator startup and not a global travel platform. Hosts and guests were having to explain the brand to each other. The name was a friction point, not an asset.
There was also a positioning problem. Airbnb was sliding toward competing with hotels on price and convenience — a fight it could win on some axes but not on all of them, and a fight that didn't use the brand's actual advantage. The advantage was that staying in someone’s apartment in a real neighborhood felt different from staying in a hotel. The team needed a brand that made that difference the point.
The rebrand
Airbnb’s in-house brand team led the strategy work. DesignStudio in London led the visual identity. The collaboration ran for about 12 months before the public launch. The team interviewed hosts and guests in multiple countries, worked through dozens of symbol concepts, and tested the language extensively internally.
The result, launched July 16, 2014, was three things at once:
- A new wordmark (clean sans-serif, lowercase, modern).
- A new symbol called the Bélo, designed as a composite of four ideas: a person, a place, a heart, and the letter A. It was meant to be drawn, shared, and adapted — not just an icon for a logo lockup.
- A new tagline, “Belong Anywhere,” which became the brand's positioning statement: Airbnb is about the feeling of belonging in a place, not about a transaction.
What grew, and what came with it
Over the decade after the rebrand, Airbnb’s listings grew about 10x — from roughly 800,000 to more than 8 million globally. The company went public in December 2020 at a $31 billion valuation. The brand identity held up across that scale without needing another reset. The Bélo is still in use today, in roughly the same form it launched with.
The rebrand also drew immediate criticism in the launch week. Some commentators thought the Bélo looked like a body part, a sex toy, or other things Airbnb hadn’t intended. Social media was unkind for about 48 hours. The brand recovered quickly because the underlying strategy was strong and because the symbol’s use cases (in product, in signage, on profile pictures) made it feel natural in context. The criticism faded within a week and the symbol has held up since.
What other companies tried to copy
A wave of platform companies tried similar “rebrand to graduate from startup to global” moves in the years that followed. Some worked (Mailchimp, Slack). Many didn’t. The patterns of failure were consistent:
- No strategy underneath the design. Rebrands done because the marketing team wanted new work, without a position change, produced visual updates that felt like fashion rather than meaning.
- Wordmark-only updates. Companies that updated their wordmark but didn't build a symbol left themselves without a long-tail visual asset, which limited brand recognition across non-logo surfaces.
- Short internal runway. DesignStudio spent about a year inside Airbnb. Companies that compressed that into 8 weeks couldn't get internal alignment, which meant the new brand didn't survive contact with the rest of the org.
- Defending the symbol from launch-week criticism is hard if you weren't sure of it in the first place. Airbnb held the line on the Bélo because the company's leadership had been part of the year of internal work and believed in it. Brands that did less internal work flinched and rolled back changes.
How RGM thinks about rebrands
When clients ask about a rebrand, our first question is whether the company has actually outgrown the old brand. If the answer is “the marketing team wants new work,” we usually recommend not doing it — or doing a much smaller refresh than a full rebrand. Rebrands are expensive, internally distracting, and can damage existing equity if the new identity doesn’t carry comparable meaning.
When the answer is “the company is now a different thing than the old brand reflects,” the Airbnb case is a useful structural example. Build a year of internal alignment before the public launch. Develop a symbol (not just a wordmark) so the brand has a long-tail visual asset. Make sure the strategy underneath the design is real and articulable in plain language. And be prepared to defend the new identity from launch-week criticism — because most strong rebrands draw some, and the ones that survive are the ones where leadership has internalized the strategy enough to hold the line.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Bélo actually represent?
It's designed as a composite of four ideas: a person (the top), a place (the bottom dot), a heart (the curve), and the letter A. Airbnb has used the word “Bélo” for it — a portmanteau the brand team coined. The symbol was designed to be drawn freehand, simplified, and adapted across contexts, not just appear in a logo lockup.
How long did the rebrand take?
About 12 months of internal work between Airbnb and DesignStudio (London) before the July 16, 2014 public launch. The internal year included strategy work, host and guest research across multiple countries, dozens of symbol iterations, and extensive internal testing.
Was the criticism really that bad?
Yes, for about 48 hours. Several commentators publicly mocked the Bélo for looking like various things it wasn’t intended to look like. Social media was unkind. The brand recovered quickly because the criticism was largely confined to the symbol-in-isolation framing — once the symbol started appearing in context (on the app, in hosts' profile pictures, on signage), it felt natural and the mockery faded.
Has Airbnb ever updated the brand again?
There have been refinements and brand-system extensions over the years, but no full rebrand. The Bélo and the “Belong Anywhere” positioning have remained in place for over a decade. The 2020 IPO was done under the same brand identity.
Why did DesignStudio get the work?
DesignStudio (London) had been working with Airbnb on smaller projects before the rebrand and had built credibility with the in-house team. The full rebrand assignment came through that relationship. The collaboration is sometimes referenced as a model for how brand-agency partnerships should work on identity work — deep, year-long, and collaborative rather than transactional.
Sources & references
- Airbnb Newsroom — Belong Anywhere announcement (2014) — Airbnb's official rebrand announcement.
- DesignStudio — Airbnb case study — Agency's account of the brand-identity work.
- Airbnb S-1 (2020 IPO) — Airbnb’s public filing covering scale and brand history.