As part of a broader application update, Airbnb introduced on Tuesday a new feature that allows travelers to book and experience, such as taking a massage, haircut or chef-prepared meal or participating in some activity. These new offers can be added to your stay, but they can also be kept independently, Airbnb says.
For example, you can book a tour in a city you have traveled, but where you have chosen to stay elsewhere, the company suggests.
This is not the first time Airbnb has tried such a feature – Stopped a previous version of experience in 2023 to improve the basic offer of stay. Now the company once again wants customers to go beyond the design of a trip.
The traffic is intended to benefit from the Airbnb traffic website it has already received. During the Airbnb Q1 2025 call, CEO Brian Chesky said his service had access to over 1.5 billion devices last year, but pointed out that many people were coming to the site and do not book home.
It also brings Airbnb more directly into competition with other travel companies such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Viator and Gtyourguide and service providers such as YELP.
Initially, Airbnb allows you to book services in 10 categories, including chefs, feeding, prepared meals, photography, massage, spa treatment, personal training, hair, nails and makeup. Services will be offered in 100 cities worldwide in eight countries.
While users can benefit from the services where they stay, they will usually have to travel to experience for experiences.
Initially, experiences will include tours of cultural and museums. Outdoor, sea and wild animals. Food excursions and cooking lessons. Art workshops and shopping experiences. And training, well -being and beauty experiences. The company begins experiences in 19 categories in 1,000 cities in the world.
Airbnb also begins exclusive experiences on its platform called Airbnb Originals, which include celebrities. These include things such as the dough at the French Bastards Bakery with Chef Raphaelle Elbaz or Playing Beach Volleyball with Olympian Carolina Solberg on Leblon Beach in Rio.
“These experiences and services are a way to experience a city like a local. We believe it is natural extensions at home [stays]. What is great for Airbnb is that you have unique accommodation that you can’t find anywhere else. We are thinking of our new offers the same way, “said Judson Coplan, Vice President of Marketing Products at Airbnb, TechCrunch for a call.
Coplan believes Airbnb experiences can inspire people to travel and make a trip they might not have thought about. In addition, he believes that new offers can lead to people who discover new things to do in their city.
Airbnb will receive a 15% cut from services and a 20% reduction in experiences. However, users will only see one value in searching or reservation or category. The company states that guests in these categories will go through verification and quality controls that include their experience, their presence on the internet, training and the required licenses.
Airbnb’s new app adds a social game
The addition of services and experiences is part of a broader information information where both applications for visitors and hosts will be renewed to host the new categories, including changes.
Visitors will be able to explore and close from the accusations of residence, services and experiences. And if travelers already have an upcoming trip, the application will suggest relevant experiences or services. On the other hand, the hosts will have a calendar functions and a list that will help them manage bookings and offers.
Airbnb is also preparing to develop social characteristics later this year.
The application today has a group exchange feature for travel planning, but plans to add a group chat characteristic for people who have gone through an experience together. In this way, they can talk about the experience, share photos and videos or make recommendations for another trip.
In turn, Airbnb hopes that this could lead people to want to travel more and use their platform to do so.
The company says it develops private privacy features around these social connections to create a safe experience for users.
Social characteristics follow last year an up -to -date profile page that allowed users to describe more about themselves, including where they live, the languages that speak and other events about themselves.
Coplan said that after this liberation, the number of integrated platform profiles increased by 15x.
“There was a huge increase in many people who wanted to share more about themselves. For us, this was an indication that the journey is something for connections,” he explained. “Whether it’s your host, the people you travel with, or the people you meet along the way. There is particularly, at this time, the desire to connect with other people.”
Escalation of customer service with AI
Replacing the comments made by Chesky, Coplan noted how Airbnb uses AI to provide customer service and how, over time, AI’s assistant will become a concierge who can handle planning and travel inspiration.
Earlier this month, Chesky introduced Airbnb customer service agent. Unlike the previous version of the bot, which redirects users to a support article, the assistant now provides an answer in the conversation.
The bot is initially available to English -speaking users in the US and will be fully released by the end of the month on this market. Later this year, the feature will be available in more countries and languages, Coplan told TechCrunch.
Over time, he says Airbnb will add more features to AI’s assistant, including personalized answers tailored to your journey and booking and action buttons to take quick actions, such as cancellation of a booking.
The updated Airbnb website and iOS and Android applications are available to all users worldwide starting today.
