As part of the wider update of the Airbnb application on Tuesday, he introduced a new function that allows travelers to reserve services and experiences such as massage, hairstyle or meal prepared for the chef or take part in some activity. These new offers can be added to your stay, but they can also be reserved independently, says Airbnb.
This is not the first time Airbnb tried this function – He stopped the previous version of the experience in 2023 To improve your basic stay offer. Now the company once again wants customers to go beyond traveling.
This move is aimed at using the Airbnb website, which is already receiving. During the Airbnb phone in the first quarter of 2025, CEO Brian Chesky said that his service was obtained over 1.5 billion devices in the last year, but noticed that many people came to the site and did not reserve the house.
It also brings Airbnb more directly in competition with other tourist companies, such as TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Viator and Getyourguide and service providers such as Yelp.
Initially, Airbnb will allow users to reserve services in 10 categories, including chefs, catering, prepared meals, photography, massages, SPA treatment, personal training, hair, nails and makeup. Services will be offered in 100 cities around the world in eight countries.
While users can use the services in which they stay, they will usually have to travel to the place of experience.
Initially, the experience will include cultural and museum trips; Impressions in the open air, aquatic sport and wildlife; Cooking trips and classes; Artistic workshops and shopping; and training, well -being and beauty experience. The company launches experience in 19 categories in 1000 cities around the world.
Airbnb also introduces exclusive experiences on its platform called Airbnb Originals, which include celebrity partnerships. These include things such as creating a dough in a French bakery with a bastard with chef Raphaelle Elbaz or playing beach volleyball with Olympic Carolina Solberg on the Leblon beach in Rio.
“These experiences and services are a way to experience a city like local. We believe that these are natural extensions to home (stays),” said Judson Coplan, Vice President of Product Marketing at Airbnb in connection with the phone. “What is great in Airbnb is that you get a unique accommodation that you can't find anywhere else. We think about our new offers in the same way.”
Coplan believes that Airbnb experiences can inspire people to travel and travel that they could not think about. In addition, he believes that new offers can lead to discovering new things to do in your own city.
Airbnb will take 15% cuts from services and 20% cutting from experience. However, users will see one price when searching or booking any category. The company claims that the hosts in these categories will undergo verification and quality checks that include their experience, online presence, education and required licenses.
The new Airbnb application adds a social game
Adding services and experiences is part of a greater update of the application, in which both applications for guests and the hosts will be renovated to accommodate new categories, including.
Guests will be able to discover and book categories of stay, services and experiences. And if travelers already book the upcoming journey, the application suggests related experiences or services. On the other hand, the hosts will have the functions of calendar and offers that will help them manage reservations and offers.
Airbnb is also preparing to introduce social functions this year.
The application today has the function of sending group messages to travel planning, but plans to add a group chat function for people who participated in experience together. In this way, they can talk about experience, share photos and videos or give recommendations regarding another journey.
In turn, Airbnb hopes that this can lead people to more travel and the use of its platform.
The company claims that it is developing privacy functions around these social connections to create a safe experience for users.
Last year, social functions take place updated profile, which allowed users to describe more about themselves, in the place where they live, the languages they speak, and other facts about themselves.
Coplan said that after this release the number of completed profiles on the platform increased by 15x.
“There was a huge increase in the number of people who wanted to share more about themselves. For us it was a hint that the journey was about calls,” he explained. “Regardless of whether it is your host, the people you travel with, or the people you meet along the way are, especially at this moment, the desire to connect with other people.”
Customer service scaling with artificial intelligence
Copy, which corrected by Chesky Coplan, noticed how Airbnb uses artificial intelligence to provide customer service, and how his assistant AI will become a consisode with time that will cope with planning travel and inspiration.
At the beginning of this month, Chesky introduced a customer service agent powered by Airbnb. Unlike the previous version of the bot, which redirected users to the support article, the assistant now provides a reply to the chat.
BOT is initially available to English users in the USA and will be fully implemented by the end of the month in this market. Later this year, the function will become available to more countries and languages, said Coplan Techcrunch.
Over time, he says that Airbnb will add more functions to its AI assistant, including personalized answers adapted to travel and reservation, as well as action buttons in the line for quick activities, such as reservation cancellation.
The updated Airbnb website and iOS and Android applications implement all users around the world.
