Airbnb is expanding beyond home rentals by adding hotels, AI planning tools and airport transportation services. The expansion highlights Airbnb’s ambition to become a broader travel and hospitality platform. AI-driven tools are expected to help users plan trips more quickly and manage bookings more easily.
Airbnb's business was letting users book a room or a whole property owned by someone else. In most cases, the host would be a house or a property owner, and you would get a stay with basic services such as a bed, a bath, and a kitchen. The company is now introducing hotels to its platform to drive new revenue and offer more options for travelers to book stays.
“There are a few examples of the types of trips for which a hotel is probably better suited, such as last-minute bookings, one-night stays, and business trips. What we’ve done in the Airbnb app is that when we can see you’re searching for that kind of stay, we can recommend hotels without sending you to another part of the app or tapping on another tab,” said Jud Coplan, VP of marketing at Airbnb in an interaction with TechCrunch.
Property booking is just one part of the equation now for Airbnb. The company also wants users to book experiences and services, which were launched last year, during their trip as well. In the last few months, the company has launched grocery delivery to properties and airport pickup services. With its summer launch, Airbnb is adding luggage storage in over 15,000 locations. Additionally, it will launch car rental services this summer.
Airbnb is redesigning the app to accommodate all the different parts, such as stays, experiences, and services. On the home page, users will see suggestions for all categories.
The company has been testing out hotel listings for a few months and is officially adding a filter to search for them in its app. Initially, the travel tech company is partnering with boutique hotels in 20 cities, including New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, and Singapore.
Users will see a pop-up to look at hotels if they are searching for a stay for one or two nights in a city. They can also choose to see only hotels by applying a particular filter in the search. Airbnb said that it is offering a price match guarantee and would refund the difference in app credits if you find the listing at a lower rate somewhere else.
While the company is not launching any official loyalty program, it will start offering Airbnb credits for the first car rental booking or up to 15% credit on hotel bookings.
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These initiatives reflect a broader convergence happening across travel tech: Uber, long a ride-hailing company, has been expanding into hotel and trip booking, while Airbnb is now effectively entering the transportation business.
The company is using AI in some other tools. With this release, it will let hosts add their address and let AI fill in details for easy listing creation.
“I think that the way in which we think about AI is how it can be used to help people find what they’re looking for more effectively and efficiently. And you see with this release that we have AI spread across a number of features across the app on the guest side and the host side,” Coplan said.
On the customer side, it is introducing category tags such as location, amenities, and family-friendliness that let you skim through reviews related to the tag.