Cortis Experience Seduces Fans to Seoul as Airbnb Doubles Down on K-pop Strategy
Cortis at their Airbnb Seoul hideout.
Courtesy of Airbnb
-
Share on Facebook
-
Share on X
-
Google Preferred
-
Share to Flipboard
-
Show additional share options
-
Share on LinkedIn
-
Share on Pinterest
-
Share on Reddit
-
Share on Tumblr
-
Share on Whats App
-
Send an Email
-
Print the Article
-
Post a Comment
K-pop has not only conquered the world, it has brought the world to South Korea. That was the somewhat unsurprising headline finding of a new research study commissioned by Airbnb as part of its ongoing collaboration with some of the country’s biggest music stars.
Last week, Airbnb threw open the doors to a neon-lit, fully immersive experience created in partnership with K-pop boy band Cortis. At the same time, the company quietly dropped an in-depth report titled “Korea Calling: How K-Culture Is Driving a New Generation of Travelers into Korea.” While the Cortis experience lit up social media as fans flocked to central Seoul in hopes of getting a glimpse of one of K-pop’s fastest-rising groups, the research study laid bare the savvy strategy behind the global travel brand’s growing efforts to align its identity in Korea with the country’s greatest cultural exports.
Related Stories
TV
'Believe Me': 'Slow Horses,' 'Line of Duty' Stars on the Key Role an Intimacy Coordinator Played on ITV's "Black Cab Rapist" Victims Drama
Movies
Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård Join Park Chan-wook on Cannes Jury
Airbnb’s report, which was based on a survey of several thousand international guests to Korea, found that 94 percent of visitors and prospective travelers to the country say K-culture influenced their interest in going. Perhaps more consequentially, travelers strongly motivated by K-culture stay longer, spend more and are more likely to travel in groups. The report captures the growing trend of young people from across the globe hashing out plans for their long-dreamt-of K-pop pilgrimage.
Cortis is among the hottest new outfits sparking such demand. The five-member group — Martin, James, Juhoon, Seonghyeon and Keonho — debuted under Hybe’s BigHit Music label in August 2025, the most prominent act launched on the storied imprint behind BTS in years. Their debut EP, Color Outside the Lines, landed at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, and earlier this year they headlined the opening night of the NBA Crossover Concert Series during NBA All-Star 2026 — the first K-pop act to do so.
Their lead single, “Redred,” off recently released second EP Greengreen, supplied both the soundtrack and the visual experience for the hideout Airbnb built around them at home in Korea. The space, tucked into a sleek events building in central Seoul, is split across two color worlds drawn from the EP — crimson red zones and teal green spaces, furnished with personal items and design touches drawn from the members’ own creative studio.
Across a guided two-hour journey, the 30 fans chosen for the launch-day Airbnb event moved through a sequence of game-like stations, the first designed to coax out their personal preferences so they could see how their tastes compare to members of Cortis.
“It feels special to invite our fans, Coers, into our Seoul hideout,” the group said in a statement timed to the launch. “‘Redred’ is all about discovering ourselves — what we lean into, what we push back against.”
Elsewhere in the hideout, fans deciphered Cortis-themed crosswords using UV-lit clues, customized keepsakes to take home, and worked their way through a paint-splatter zone. The afternoon climaxed with a block-stacking game played between the fans and all five members of the group — the kind of unscripted, in-person encounter that has become the greatest emotional currency of K-pop fandom.
Airbnb opened the broader pop-up — same space, but without the group members present — to more than 1,000 additional guests over the following week.
For Airbnb, the partnership is the latest move in a K-pop strategy that it has been slowly building for years. The company first tied itself to K-culture in 2022, offering two guests an overnight stay in the rural pension where BTS filmed their reality show In the Soop. A first-of-its-kind stay inside Seoul’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza followed in 2023, in partnership with BTS’ Hybe label-mates Enhypen. Last year, Airbnb expanded the strategy significantly through a tie-up with Seventeen, running a series of fan experiences across Seoul, Los Angeles and Tokyo timed to the group’s world tour.
The model echoes Airbnb’s high-profile moves in the U.S. pop world — such as the recent Sabrina Carpenter listing dropped during this year’s Coachella — but with the added element that most K-pop fans are also interested in exploring traditional Korean cultur