When one woman finally convinced her father, a former border guard in West Berlin, to return to visit the united city decades after the wall had come down, she booked a room in East Berlin through Airbnb. To her surprise, their Airbnb host was also a former border guard, but on the opposite side of the wall as her father. She says talking about that experience with their Airbnb host helped her dad see Germany in a better light and feel less skeptical about travel.
That’s not a Hallmark card. That’s a real story, and Airbnb made the most of it. They interviewed the real people behind it, created a short, animated film about the story, and shot behind-the-scenes videos for how it was made. On a microsite, they even made desktop backgrounds from the animations and listed some 25th anniversary Berlin Wall events to attend.
Remarkable stories like these are great word of mouth carriers — and every business has one. Why not create tons of ways for your customers to share that story with everyone else?
