Gayborhood and LGBTQ+ Friendly Superhosts on Airbnb

Improving experiences for LGBTQ+ travelers by adding three conceptual features

  • Role: Lead Researcher & Designer

  • Sector: Lodging online marketplace

  • Time: 3 weeks

  • User group: LGBTQ+ travelers

  • Focus: User Interviews, Research, Prototypes, Usability Testing, & Iterations


Overview ↓

Impact

“I wanted to click on the gayborhood icon as soon as I saw it. I was so delighted to even see it as an option.” - Queer Airbnb traveler

Background

most especially when I am heading to a new city or a town that could be considered a rural or conservative area. When using Airbnb in the past, I have often wondered how accessible the gay neighborhoods were from where I was staying. Problem Introduction:

Currently Airbnb doesn’t have a way to search for queer friendly neighborhoods or hosts.

As a queer person I tend to do
a lot of research before I travel

Airbnb has one-of-a-kind filters for users to find very specific types of homes or apartments to stay in. The app shows a variety of fun, scenic, or silly categories but queer, non-binary, trans, & LGBTQ+ folx are unsure that the places they are choosing to stay in will feel safe or inclusive to them.

Opportunity for LGBTQ+ inclusion & safety

With all these new possibilities, keeping safety information a bit more at an arm’s reach could lessen the research time needed by LGBTQ+ users.

Airbnb opens up a lot of
possibilities!

The Idea

Peek at Final Solution

Interactive Prototype

Click on the filter icon and scroll down to select the LGBTQ+ Superhost toggle!

If you’ve reached the end and would like to restart, hover over the mobile screen and tap R on your keyboard.

Overview of discovery & research↓


  • I first set out to interview at least forty LGBTQ+ peers through a quantitative survey process. All of these people were LGBTQ+ identifying, either primarily use Airbnb, used to use it, or have used it a few times.

  • I then dove in a bit deeper with five LGBTQ+ folx to have a broader 30 min chat inspired from my initial survey responses.

I spoke to A LOT of LGBTQ+ folx!

Based from the forty survey responses, the ability for LGBTQ+ folx to safely and most cost effectively travel for the novelty of getting to experience the local feel of a new city was a common thread.

What were the commonalities?

Here were a few common pain points,

  • “If I'm staying in an area where I'm unsure if people are chill with LGBTQ+ people, I'll usually stay at a hotel since that tends to be the safer option (especially if wherever I am is more rural).”

  • “I don’t prefer it over Airbnb, but Google maps has a little display icon if a location is LGBTQ+ friendly which is super helpful when going anywhere!”

  • “Typically I do my own research outside of Airbnb to see where the gay neighborhoods are before I book. It would be amazing if this was built into the product!”

  • “Honestly just appreciate any Airbnb hosts who go out of their way to make sure their guests know they're either LGBTQ+ themselves or are allies (and especially those who mention being trans-inclusive).”

  • “I'm mostly concerned about whether or not someone's LGBTQ+ friendly, including trans-inclusive. It makes me feel safer, and I wish Airbnb had a way to allow hosts to opt into saying they're queer-friendly.”

  • “Would appreciate a filter or info on if folks felt safe in the area as queer folx.”

  • Booked Airbnbs that have not specified the safety of a neighborhood in general (of which I then had a problem). I know they're not legally bound to doing that, but having an up front astric that denotes when previous bookers have experienced safety issues would be very helpful.

  • “I’d like to be able to filter reviews by queer people. I’d be most interested in what they have to say.”

I focused on who I was empathizing with:

In discovering the kinds of struggles and experiences LGBTQ+ folx have when booking a place to stay, I chatted with five queer frequent Airbnb travelers more in-depth.

Key Takeaway: it was easy to track common experienced micro-aggressions, like-minded strategies in maintaining safety by researching, and even the desire to stay in a hotel in more conservative locations. Below are a few highlighted call-outs from the study:

Other competitor LGBTQ+ accommodations

Noticing each competitor relates to their customers by offering easy accessible filtering access, and/or are outwardly LGBTQ+ inclusive.

Defining the Users

The need of feeling safe by being able to see an LGBTQ+ friendly host’s badge appealed to each person, as well as finding queer neighborhoods to choose from.

I walked through how my LGBTQ+ users would feel, think, and make decisions when picking a destination, searching for spaces, reaching out to a host, and then finally booking a space (as it is now) on Airbnb.

As it is now on the app

I focused on a queer Airbnb user looking to find either an LGBTQ+ identifying Superhost or a queer friendly space; without the pressure of either the host or the traveler feeling pressure to out themselves if they didn’t want to. My research indicated that much of my queer travelers wanted to be able to easily locate LGBTQ+ hosts, but were aware (as was I) that designing a queer friendly badge for a host could create a motivation for the host or traveler to be negatively targeted. The idea of allowing Superhosts to opt in for the LGBTQ+ filter/badge eased this concern as Superhosts go through a vetting process by Airbnb.

Focusing on each of the three new feature additions:

1. Gayborhood icon
2. LGBTQ+ Superhost’s toggle
3. Local laws & advisories button & section

Diving Into the UI Process

Due to the already established Airbnb brand identity, color palette, and icons it was necessary for me to match the same colors and illustration style to instill believable new feature additions. I had a blast mimicking the same minimal line approach that Airbnb’s current icon system uses in crafting a believable gayborhood icon.

Crafting a believable gayborhood icon

Solution: High Fidelity Designs

LGBTQ+ Superhosts, Mobile

Gayborhood Filter, Responsive

Local Laws & Advisories, Mobile

What’s Next?

  • Next steps would entail another round of usability testing with more queer users than just the initial five I’ve already interviewed. I would be interested in hearing more from some of the forty folx that filled out my initial discovery survey.

  • I would like to define what the criteria is for a host to list their space as belonging to a gayborhood - most especially if a space isn’t in a traditional area like The Castro in San Francisco.

  • I would also like to define different well-known gayborhoods throughout the U.S. and abroad.

  • I’m interested in continuing to play with different pride & trans text animations, to really make the added LGBTQ+ filters pop and exciting for users to use.

Reflections Thus Far

For this project, I dedicated a lot of time sourcing exclusively LGBTQ+ interviewees for the forty survey responses. Being a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself, it was rewarding to try and only hear from other queer individuals and commiserate with similar feelings of being uncomfortable while traveling. Even though there is no such thing as a safe space, most especially in a business context, there are definitely methods that commonly used apps can consider when advocating for marginalized communities. I’ve often had the thinking while using Airbnb that if the host knew I was queer, would they still welcome me in their space? I feel that businesses have the responsibility to make sure people have warnings and vital information surrounding their identity, most especially when traveling in areas with anti-trans or anti-LGBTQ+ laws.




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