Experiential tourism growing in popularity
Vacationers getting more interactions with travelers and locals.
SAN FRANCISCO — The evening at Baker Beach was a postcard scene of San Francisco: bare-foot couples strolling on the beach, the golden-orange sun setting over the Pacific, a fog-free view of ships passing under the Golden Gate Bridge.
And 40 people in yoga pants dancing in the sand.
“This is a really great way to experience San Francisco, especially if you like to be active and want to do something in a really iconic place,” said Julianne Aiello, founder of Outdoor Yoga SF, who leads yoga sessions for tourists and locals on Baker Beach. “But also it’s a way to connect with other people.”
To be sure, waves of visitors still line up for cable car rides and Alcatraz cruises, but a growing number of vacationers here and elsewhere are signing up for experiential tourism, combining lesser-known sites with a healthy dose of interactions with other travelers and locals.
The workout-slash-dance party (creatively titled “Sunset Silent Disco Yoga”) is one of dozens of options offered in the Bay Area by home-share giant Airbnb as part of Trips, its new platform for finding local experiences to go along with lodging. With the move here and in 24 other cities, Airbnb becomes the newest player in an evolving segment of the tours industry that is targeting savvy travelers and Millennials looking for experiences that offer more personal connections. Instead of the traditional sightseeing bus or walking tour, these travelers are becoming craft brewers for a day, getting a crash course in glass-blowing and “seeing top London sites whilst learning the ukulele.”
In Aiello’s 90-minute class about 20 feet from the waves, for instance, participants move through positions, listening to music and her instructions through wireless headphones. A break for dancing draws stares and smiles from people walking on the beach. Cost: $29 through Airbnb.
While the bulk of travelers still wants to see popular landmarks and attractions, the trend toward immersive experiences is gaining momentum, said Ken Frohling, vice president of global partnerships for travel review site TripAdvisor, which owns tour-booking site Viator.
“A lot of travelers really want to feel or experience the culture of a destination, and we’ve seen a whole crop of tour providers, professional companies, come
about that are doing just that. That are giving the traveler a real local experience, and even a hands-on experience,” Frohling said.
There’s plenty of incentive for companies to branch out. Tours and attractions, a subcategory of the $129 billion travel activities market worldwide, accounted for $55 billion globally in 2016, according to marketing research company Phocuswright. The subcategory includes a broad range, from sightseeing tours, cruise shore excursions and walking tours, to attractions, such as museums, zoos and amusement parks. During the same year, 25.1 million visitors to San Francisco spent $8.98 billion, according to the San Francisco Travel Association.
It seems unlikely, however, that Airbnb will be a disrupter in this field the way it has been in lodging, according to industry experts.
Despite Airbnb dubbing its Trips concept as “revolutionary” when it was unveiled in November, the shift toward immersive experiences and community connections had been in motion for years. As early as 2011, San Francisco startup Vayable was offering offbeat and immersive experiences, including a “Homeless for a Day” tour of the Tenderloin, led by a homeless guide. By 2012, Vayable was offering 2,500 “unique travel experiences” in 600 cities. Similarly, the San Francisco booking site If Only started pairing luxury-experience-seekers with high-end trips, meals and lessons back in 2012.
Among the other companies that have branched out are Urban Adventures, SideTour (picked up by Groupon), and Trip4Real, which Airbnb bought a month before unveiling Trips. Of the two largest tour booking sites, Viator began to add immersive offerings in earnest last year, but GetYourGuide doesn’t show any sign of veering away from mainstream tours.
As of last week, Airbnb has about 1,100 experiences in more than 25 cities. Beyond yoga on Baker Beach, experiences include coffee roasting in Cape Town, mixing perfumes in Florence, and exploring an organic farm in Bangkok.
One of the better examples of what Airbnb wants, says company spokesman Andres La Mesa, is “Madame Renaissance,” a two-day encounter with a retired college art professor that includes creating art and discussing culture over a meal. “We don’t want cookie-cutter, non-authentic, impersonal experiences where you’re just walking around and seeing things, but you’re not connecting with a person.”
“In the future, whenever someone is traveling somewhere, we would like them to be able not only to stay in the home with the host, but also to find an experience that really matches their passion,” La Mesa said. “Hopefully, these experiences can complement what people are already doing, which is seeing the main landmarks or the main monuments. This is just a way to create more local type of travels.”
Recently, Airbnb released its own travel magazine, Airbnbmag — the pilot
‘We don’t want cookie-cutter, nonauthentic, impersonal experiences where you’re just walking around and seeing things but you’re not connecting with a person.’
issue focuses on some lesser-known destinations, immersive experiences, personal stories and, predictably, a roundup of lakeside villas that can be booked on Airbnb.
The industry is taking note, says Deanna Ting, hospitality editor for travel news site Skift.com.
“It has a ripple effect on the industry overall. It’s showing there is an importance to destination experiences,” she said, and that the accommodation industry “should be thinking more about what guests are doing when they’re not in the hotel room.”
According to industry experts, Airbnb is facing a couple of hurdles, including that the great majority of tours are still booked offline, in person and often last-minute once travelers get to the destination. In this case, however, said Ting, Airbnb’s brand recognition and user base makes them better suited to succeed.
Another hurdle is one that all tour-related companies face, and that is more of a variable with Airbnb’s peerto-peer philosophy — ensuring that experience hosts are qualified and can provide a consistent experience. Put another way: Subletting your apartment doesn’t require a lot of special training or qualifications, but tours are generally considered a professional service. How many people would get a haircut from a peer-to-peer barber?
“With a tour, people’s expectations are higher. The logistics are much more challenging,” said Ting. “There’s a lot more stuff you have to consider when you’re hosting a trip than when you’re hosting a home.”
La Mesa says Airbnb is committed to a more strenuous vetting process than was necessary for home hosts. He points to the company’s vetting protocol, which includes that hosts have any required licensing necessary for their experience. Most hosts “qualify for $1 million in liability insurance coverage, except for certain trips, such as experiences like helicopter rides and other motorized vehicles,” according to a company statement.
Of the 34,000 people who have applied to be experience hosts on Airbnb, 6,000 have completed their submissions.
“The goal of the vetting protocol is to make sure that every single host hits the same standard,” he said. “We want to make sure that quality is the most important thing.”
Consensus among industry watchers — especially as booking tours continues to shift from on-site to online — is that quality and consistency are maintained through reviews, something in which Airbnb members are already familiar.
On Baker Beach, if yogabody-language is any indication, the reviews were positive. Instructor Aiello says having Airbnb as an outlet has provided a new way to reach people interested in a “nontraditional yoga experience.”
“It tends to attract people who want to do something different, who want to connect with other travelers, meet new people. They’re open-minded,” she said. “The last class I had on Sunday, I had someone from Sweden, Poland, Australia. I had people from all over the world here.”
Yoga participant Carly Holthaus, an airline attendant and travel blogger based in Minneapolis but with family in the Bay Area, said she decided to try it because it “was something different.”
“I look for local and community events. I’m always searching and trying to find the latest thing,” she said after the class. “Definitely I would have my friends come to this.”
And, supposedly, make a few friends along the way.