Case Study: Airbnb achieves expansion into 190 markets with OneSky's localization solution

Airbnb - Customer Case Study

Airbnb grew from a San Francisco startup into a global hospitality platform with over 1,000,000 listings across 34,000 cities in 190 countries. That scale created hard problems: how to localize product and content across languages and regional variants, tailor marketing to diverse cultures and channels, recruit local hosts where online reach is limited, and navigate regulatory and infrastructure hurdles.

Airbnb solved this with engineering and community-driven tactics: a custom translation management system and Polyglot.js for fast, contextual localization (Japan launched in a week by prioritizing high‑traffic strings), automated spell/variant switching, a mix of crowdsourced and professional translators, targeted top‑down and bottom‑up marketing, localized referral integrations for messaging apps, and on‑the‑ground host acquisition (France CPA five times better than Facebook). The result was rapid, measurable international growth—quick market entries (e.g., 1,000+ listings in Cuba soon after launch), stronger local engagement, and a scalable playbook for global expansion.

Airbnb

Dennis Goedegebuure

Former Head of Global SEO