Rental platform Airbnb has announced the addition of its Icons program, a category that provides a range of international experiences including a stay in the house from Pixar’s Up and an overnight in the Musee D’ Orsay in Paris.
The first 11 Icons experiences include recreations of houses from popular culture, such as the floating house from Pixar’s film Up, and visits with celebrities, such as a night out with comic Kevin Hart.
Of the 11 Icons, house rentals include a full-scale model of the house from Pixar’s Up, which is suspended by a crane during a breakfast picnic, to a stay in the clock tower of Paris’s Musee D’ Orsay, which was transformed into a bedrom by French designer Mathieu Lehanneur and will be available for the opening of the upcoming summer Olympics.
The experiences will be awarded to guests through a selection process, with approximately eight additional Icon experiences being rolled out throughout the year to join the first batch. Each Icon is free or under $100 (£80).
“Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination – until now,” said Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky. “As life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.”
The launch follows the platform’s release of recreations of Barbie’s Malibu Dreamhouse and Shrek’s swampland cottage, as well as previous overnight experiences in an Ikea showroom and the last remaining Blockbuster.
“These experiences captured people’s imagination and they allowed people to step into someone else’s world,” said Chesky. “And at its best, this is what Airbnb does. And what it’s always been about.”
To create the spaces, the brand employed a variety of strategies. In the case of the Up house, it was built from scratch, while other properties were renovated or outfitted with a particular theme such as the X-Mansion from the X-Men movie series or Prince’s Purple Rain house.
“The Up house is one of the most iconic homes in any film ever,” said Chesky. “You’re gonna be able to stay in Carl and Ellie’s home and it will feel like you’re stepping inside the movie.”
“This is a real house we built from scratch. We had to literally paint every detail in the home to match the exact Pantone colours used in the film, from the roof tiles to the siding,” he continued.
For the X-Mansion, the team searched for a home in Upstate New York that looked like an approximation of the house from the movie series and then covered the interior in comic-strip style illustrations by artist Joshua Vides.
According to Airbnb VP of design Teo Connor, it took approximately two weeks for Vides and his team to hand-paint each room.
“Each Icon has a different timeline because they’re all so unique, so different,” Connor told Dezeen. “[There was] a huge amount of effort to bring these things to life and I think it really shows.”
“With these types of things, we’re really wanting to immerse you in a world and for it to feel authentic,” she continued.
Other Icons include a stay at the Ferrari museum in a custom-made circular bed that is surrounded by various Ferrari models and a visit to Bollywood star Janhvi Kapoor’s “childhood oasis” in India.
To visit the various experiences, travellers must submit a written entry through Airbnb during a timed submission period. 4,000 guests will be selected and awarded a “golden ticket” to attend the experiences over the coming year.
The brand also released several updates in order to make booking and organizing group trips easier for travellers, including multiple users being able to message the host and a ranking system when selecting a rental together.
Last year, Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky warned against designers failing to embrace AI and announced a program that called to designers and creatives to rent out their spaces for supplemental income.
The photography is courtesy of Airbnb.
