As a part of a broader app replace, Airbnb on Tuesday launched a brand new function that enables vacationers to guide providers and experiences, like getting a therapeutic massage, haircut, or chef-prepared meal, or participating in some exercise. These new choices could be added to your keep, however they can be booked independently, Airbnb says.
As an example, you’ll be able to guide a tour in a metropolis you’ve traveled to, however the place you’ve chosen to remain elsewhere, the corporate suggests.
This isn’t the primary time Airbnb has tried such a function — it paused an earlier model of experiences in 2023 to enhance its core providing of stays. Now the corporate as soon as once more desires clients to transcend planning a visit.
The transfer is supposed to capitalize on the visitors Airbnb’s website already receives. Throughout Airbnb’s Q1 2025 name, CEO Brian Chesky stated that its service was accessed by over 1.5 billion units within the final 12 months, however identified that many individuals come to the positioning and don’t guide a house.
It additionally brings Airbnb extra straight in competitors with different journey firms akin to Tripadvisor, Reserving.com, Viator, and GetYourGuide, and repair suppliers like Yelp.
Initially, Airbnb means that you can guide providers throughout 10 classes, together with cooks, catering, ready meals, pictures, massages, spa therapy, private coaching, hair, nails, and make-up. The providers will likely be provided in 100 cities worldwide throughout eight international locations.
Whereas customers can benefit from providers the place they’re staying, they are going to usually must journey to a venue for the experiences.
Initially, experiences will embody cultural and museum excursions; outside, watersport, and wildlife experiences; meals excursions and cooking courses; artwork workshops and procuring experiences; and exercise, wellness, and wonder experiences. The corporate is launching experiences in 19 classes throughout 1,000 cities on this planet.
Airbnb can also be launching unique experiences on its platform referred to as Airbnb Originals, which contain celeb partnerships. These embody issues like pastry making at French Bastards bakery with chef Raphaelle Elbaz, or enjoying seashore volleyball with Olympian Carol Solberg on Rio’s Leblon Seashore.
“These experiences and providers are a option to expertise a metropolis like a neighborhood. We predict that these are pure extensions to dwelling [stays]. What’s nice about Airbnb is that you just get distinctive lodging that you could’t discover wherever else. We take into consideration our new choices the identical method,” Judson Coplan, VP of Product Advertising at Airbnb, instructed TechCrunch over a name.
Coplan believes that Airbnb Experiences might encourage folks to journey and make a journey they may not have considered. Plus, he thinks that the brand new choices can result in folks discovering new issues to do in their very own city.
Airbnb will take a 15% minimize from providers and a 20% minimize from experiences. Nonetheless, customers will simply see one value when trying to find or reserving both class. The corporate says hosts in these classes will undergo verification and high quality checks that embody their expertise, on-line presence, schooling, and required licenses.
Airbnb’s new app provides a social play
The addition of providers and experiences is a component of a bigger app replace the place each the apps for company and hosts will likely be revamped to accommodate the brand new classes, amongst different adjustments.
Friends will be capable of discover and guide from the Keep, Companies, and Experiences classes. And, if vacationers have already got an upcoming journey booked, the app will counsel associated experiences or providers. On the opposite finish, hosts may have a calendar and listings capabilities that assist them handle bookings and choices.
Airbnb can also be making ready to roll out social options later this 12 months.
The app right this moment has a bunch messaging function for journey planning, nevertheless it plans so as to add a bunch chat function for individuals who have been to an expertise collectively. That method, they’ll discuss in regards to the expertise, share photographs and movies, or make suggestions for an additional journey.
In flip, Airbnb hopes this might lead folks to wish to journey extra and use its platform to take action.
The corporate says it’s creating privateness options round these social connections to create a protected expertise for customers.
The social options comply with final 12 months’s launch of an up to date profile web page, which allowed customers to explain extra about themselves, together with the place they dwell, languages they communicate, and different details about themselves.
Coplan stated that after that launch, the variety of accomplished profiles on the platform elevated by 15x.
“There was an enormous enhance in plenty of individuals who wished to share extra about themselves. For us, that was a clue that journey is one thing about connections,” he defined. “Whether or not it’s your host, folks you journey with, or folks you meet alongside the way in which. There may be particularly, on this second of time, a need to attach with different folks.”
Scaling customer support with AI
Mirroring feedback made by Chesky, Coplan famous how Airbnb is utilizing AI to offer customer support, and the way, over time, its AI assistant will turn out to be a concierge that may deal with journey planning and inspiration.
Earlier this month, Chesky launched Airbnb’s AI-powered customer support agent. Not like the earlier model of the bot, which redirected customers to a assist article, the assistant now gives a solution inside the chat.
The bot is initially out there to English-speaking customers within the U.S. and will likely be totally rolled out by month-end to this market. Later this 12 months, the function will turn out to be out there to extra international locations and languages, Coplan instructed TechCrunch.
Over time, he says Airbnb will add extra options to its AI assistant, together with personalised solutions tailor-made to your journey and reserving, and in-line motion buttons for taking fast actions, akin to canceling a reserving.
The up to date Airbnb web site and iOS and Android apps are rolling out to all customers globally beginning right this moment.
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