A look at Brian Chesky's efforts to turn Airbnb into a storefront for real-world services, after its “experiences” experiment started in 2016 was unsuccessful
CEO Brian Chesky is spending hundreds of millions to relaunch his travel company as an everything app. Fitness! Food!
WiredSteven Levy
Context & Ripple Effects
Airbnb has pursued revenue and engagement beyond home rentals for years: Chesky previously framed the experience economy as a major opportunity in his early vision for travel experiences. The unsuccessful 2016 Experiences effort makes the new push a relaunch rather than a wholly new strategic direction.
The company had already signaled a broader product agenda, including guest services and a return to Experiences, in its 2024 expansion plans. This report puts the scale and strategic intent behind that agenda into sharper focus.
First-order effects
Airbnb is committing hundreds of millions to rebuild its services proposition, shifting management attention and investment toward a storefront spanning travel-adjacent offerings such as fitness and food.
The relaunch makes real-world service providers a more important prospective supply base for Airbnb, while asking the company to overcome the execution problems that limited its first Experiences experiment.
Second-order effects
A larger Airbnb services catalog could make the platform compete more directly for customer attention and provider inventory with standalone activity, wellness, and food-service marketplaces.
The investment raises the importance of matching, quality control, and support for services, areas Airbnb had previously identified as central to reliability and customer experience.
Third-order effects
If the relaunch gains traction, Airbnb could evolve from a lodging marketplace into a broader travel-transaction platform, with service attachment becoming a complement to accommodation bookings rather than a separate experiment.
The outcome will test whether a large travel audience can support a durable multi-category marketplace without diluting the trust and reliability expected from its core booking product.
The trend: Travel platforms are trying to deepen their role in a trip by bundling bookable services around the core stay.
I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to gather my thoughts on the comprehensive stupidity on display, and I just don't have anything. — This is insane. — Also, can we talk about how Wired conducted an entire photoshoot with Chesky for this feature? This is journali…
Fresh from screwing local rental markets to let you a place you have to clean yourself for more than a hotel costs, Airbnb want to be an “everything app”. — www.wired.com/story/airbnb...
Airbnb is one of the most harmful companies this country has ever conceived and I can only hope their ketamine-fueled rebrand hastens the demise. [embedded post]
Airbnb's next chapter involves “robust” profiles with “deep immersion into AI” inspired by Chesky's relationship with Altman. It'll be like the “ultimate agent” that'll manage “the rest of your life” ... I have absolutely zero questions. Makes complete and total sense — www.w…
Extremely hot take from me not knowing their budget but would have been way more impactful with b-roll instead of so much UI to convey the excitement of the offering. This doesn't feel like it's going to “take” me anywhere other than to complicated scheduling and more hidden fees
Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, speaks on partnering with Megan Thee Stallion: “We wanted somebody who has a whole sense of a world they want to create, and that's what she was able to do. (...) We had a great team, but really, she drove the creative vision of this.” [image]
feels weird to launch a new product with only 18 available services in a country of 80M people i would hide the tab for countries without services until enough liquidity is there [image]
Airbnb is expanding to offer Services and Experiences bookings Services: • 10 categories • Available in 260 cities • Entry prices around $50 • Chefs, Trainers, Stylists, & more Experiences: • Available in 650 cities • Tours, cooking classes, workshops, & more • Airbnb [image]