Airbnb CEO certain you’ll want these ‘Experiences’
But success of program started in 2016 isn’t clear
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 a slew of new options for travelers — from a loyalty program to the option to rent homes that have
undergone site inspections — 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’s far from backing away from the new business. He sees Experiences as the future, as Millennials and Gen Z customers live in smaller urban spaces where amassing things becomes superfluous. Airbnb offers 5,000 Experiences now; Chesky says it has 55,000 on the wait list.
“I’ve purposefully held the growth back because I wanted it to be amazing.”
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 their rooms, apartments or homes to strangers.
It’s grown into one of the most highly valued private start-ups, worth more than $30 billion, with 4.5 million offer- ings in 191 countries.
Growth has slowed in some markets as municipalities start to crack down on short-term rentals, arguing these hurt availability for permanent residents.
Good riddance to haters
Airbnb’s model of directly pairing homeowners with travelers sent shockwaves through the travel industry, giving individuals a brand-new alternative to hotels. But the person-to-person 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 dozens of complaints that hosts were racially discriminating against African Americans and other minority groups.
African-American guests reported that hosts would decline their request for bookings after looking at their profile photos, saying the room was already spoken for, but when those same would-be guests checked back, it was still available. A wave of similar complaints in 2016 crystalized around the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack.
The company eventually 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.
The Commitment, as the company calls it, must be signed by all hosts.
Good riddance to those who didn’t want to sign, said Chesky, who said he received many angry messages about the new policy when it was instituted.
“I got hundreds of pretty hateful emails saying, ‘I’ll never use your service again.’ I’m like, ‘Great,’ ” he said.
The biggest change
Probably the biggest change to come out of the racism concerns was a push toward instant booking. Instead of hosts individually deciding on which guests to accept, instant booking allows guests who meet a host’s requirement to automatically book the space without pre-approval from the host and without the host first seeing their name or photo.
“Now more than 50% of homes are instant-book and between 70% and 75% of bookings are instant-book,” Chesky said.