Airbnb is boosting its resources behind the company’s Experiences platform to the tune of $5 million.
The investment will allow the company to grow its tours and attractions business in the US, with plans to expand to 200 more cities around the country.
Currently, Airbnb’s Experiences offers 4,000 activities in 50 cities around the world, including 1,000 in the US.
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Since the platform launched in 2016, the company reports global weekly guest bookings are up more than 2,000%, and the number of active experiences grew 500% over the same period last year.
The announcement comes on the heels of CEO Brian Chesky outlining his vision to develop Airbnb into a “22nd-century company.”
Ramping up its Experiences operation puts the company one step closer to dominating the end-to-end travel experience for consumers - which as we’ve looked at before, could eventually lead to flight search or booking or listing independent hotel properties.
Still, the $5 million sum is modest compared to what others in the attractions space have notched. In November, Berlin-based GetYourGuide secured $75 million in Series D funding – the largest ever in its segment of the tourism industry – with more than $170 million total raised to date.
Hong Kong-based Klook similarly raised $60 million back in October.
Airbnb: A Look Back and a Look Ahead
Comparing those figures to Airbnb’s may indicate the company has other ideas about how to grow its Experiences business beyond funneling in cash.
An alternative view is that Airbnb does not need to be compared to existing booking platforms, as it has an abundance of eyeballs on the core product (private accommodation), so will use the modest investment to work on the technology to handle the supply end of its product.
Airbnb has always prided itself on building communities, and it could be relying on the community effect of the hosts it works with to get this next phase of growth off the ground.
Incentivizing hosts is the promise of supplemental income: The average earnings for someone who hosts nine to 15 Experiences a month could make from $6,200 to $24,000 a year. Of what hosts charge, however, Airbnb takes a 20% cut, a much bigger slice than the 3 to 5% it gets from home shares.