USA TODAY International Edition
Airbnb CEO sees market for selling experiences
‘New economy’ would fit the next generation
SAN FRANCISCO – Forget tourist traps selling T-shirts or snow globes. There’s an “Amazon-sized opportunity” in selling people experiences, says Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky.
“There’s going to be another economy, and it will be the experience economy. You’ll see these modern-day, bitesized apprenticeships, where you’re exposed to something new,” said Chesky in an interview with USA TODAY.
Airbnb’s Experiences program, introduced to great fanfare in 2016, was designed to meet the desires of its traveling customers to immerse themselves in an activity during their vacations, be it taking a calligraphy lesson, learning a traditional Malay dance or writing a song with a band leader.
It’s not clear how well it’s done. Just before Airbnb’s conference here, where it unveiled new options for travelers, the Wall Street Journal said Experiences has lost more than $100 million since it was launched, off to a slow start with customers.
Chesky said the article’s numbers were wrong but wouldn’t say what was correct. He sees Experiences as the future, as Millennials and Gen Z customers live in urban spaces where “things” becomes superfluous. Airbnb offers 5,000 Experiences now; Chesky says it has 55,000 on the wait list.
The company, which started to turn an operating profit in 2016, is one of the pioneers of the so-called sharing or gig economy, started in 2008 as a Web platform for people to rent out rooms, apartments or homes to strangers. It is worth more than $30 billion, with 4.5 million offerings in 191 countries.
Growth has slowed in some markets as municipalities crack down on shortterm rentals.
Airbnb’s model of directly pairing homeowners with travelers sent shockwaves through the travel industry. But the arrangement allowed for problems hotels and their guests typically hadn’t seen, from spy cameras to tenants who wouldn’t leave.
Airbnb weathered a storm two years ago when it was hit with complaints that hosts were biased against African Americans and other minorities.
The company responded with a non-discrimination policy stating that Airbnb hosts may not decline a guest based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status.
Probably the biggest change was a push toward instant booking. Instead of hosts deciding on which guests to accept, instant booking allows guests who meet a host’s requirement to automatically book the space.
Last year, the company also launched a feature to hold hosts accountable to the non-discrimination policy by ensuring that if a host rejects a guest by stating there was no space available for a specific time, Airbnb would automatically block the host’s calendar for subsequent reservation requests for that same period of time.