The secrecy surrounding the official relaunch of Airbnb’s Experiences product is starting to lift.
In a sponsored post Tuesday in the email newsletter of tours and activities media and events brand Arival, the short-term rental giant called for operators, guides and experience providers to complete a form showing their interest to be listed on the platform. The company also outlined new features that will be part of its Experiences product, including API integrations, the ability to have co-hosts and team management and simplified listing creation. And the post said the company is welcoming licensed tour guides and attraction-based experiences, but criteria include a maximum group size of 15 and experiences must be fully-guided.
Airbnb is expected to unveil full details of its new Experiences product at its "Summer Release" event in May, but the company has been giving clues for several months.
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During the company's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call in February, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky addressed an analyst question about whether the relaunch of Experiences will address some of the problems it had in the past.
“The first time around, I don't think we integrated experiences really well into the products,” Chesky said, adding that if a user visits the Airbnb website or app it is be “pretty hard” to find them.
“The second thing is that when you find the experiences, I don't think they were merchandised as compellingly as they could," he said. "Third, there weren't really a lot of integrations with social media. I think social media is a great distribution channel. And fourth, I think we are completely rethinking the kind of supply we're going to have. I think it's going to be really, really compelling. And then fifth, we didn't really market it that much.”
And last November, while sharing the company's Q3 2024 financial results with analysts, Chesky said, “Experiences are going to be, I think, one of many new offerings that can increase the frequency, that can make Airbnb go from an annual app to a monthly usage app, or even for some people, a weekly usage app.”
While more specifics won't come until May, the company recently appointed Walks founders and former CEO Stephen Oddo as an "advisor" to the company, and it has posted several jobs over the past months related to its Experiences business.
Airbnb's career page currently lists the role of "senior market manager, Experiences" in several cities around the world such as Rome, Barcelona, Chicago, Berlin and Rio de Janiero. And the role of “senior manager, Experiences sourcing - EMEA” explains that the role is “responsible for researching, curating, sourcing and acquiring high-quality, in-demand experiences for the Airbnb platform.”
When asked about the future of the Experiences business in January, an Airbnb spokesperson provided a statement via email: “We are regularly evaluating new offerings across the business, and continue to research ways to enhance Airbnb for our guests and hosts. We’re excited about the future of Airbnb and look forward to sharing more soon.”
Industry leaders on the future of Experiences
On Wednesday, Airbnb declined to comment on the details it shared in the Arival sponsored post, but industry leaders working in the experiences sector reacted on LinkedIn.
“They seem to be transitioning to a more traditional OTA model,” wrote Tony Carne, author of the "Everything AI in Travel" newsletter.
“The good guidance of Stephen Oddo & Paul Bennett starting to shine through.” Bennett, co-founder and former CEO of Context Travel, also became an advisor to Airbnb in January according to his LinkedIn profile.
And Peter Syme, partner of Tourpreneur, commented on Carne's post, “Hopefully they have the systems to cope with the supply we have started sending.” Last month, Christian Watts, founder and CEO of Magpie, said it’s hard to tell what the relaunch of Experiences will bring.
“Brian Chesky has mentioned 'Eiffel Tower with a twist' which suggests they might be a bit more open to some of the more mainstream products now—as long as it still has that twist,” Watts said.
He pointed out that it may have been forgotten during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Airbnb intended to make Experiences a big focus in 2020. The belief in the vertical’s potential is still there, Watts said.
Douglas Quinby, co-founder and CEO of Arival, said earlier this year the story of Airbnb’s Experiences has been fascinating to watch unfold. It’s had a massive impact, yet it has also “dramatically unperformed” he said, noting it hasn’t really lived up to expectations in the past. But the future might look different.
A reinvigorated, reinvented Airbnb Experiences will be a great thing for this part of travel.
Douglas Quinby, Arival
“It’s pretty clear that they’re engaging with the experiences industry,” he said. “And it’s great to see. A reinvigorated, reinvented Airbnb Experiences will be a great thing for this part of travel.”
As the news of hiring moves trickled through LinkedIn in recent months, the sector leaders have opinions on the decisions.
“I think they're serious this time,” Watts said. “It feels like there's some real energy behind the product right now.”
Mitch Bach, CEO and co-founder of TripSchool, an organization that provides training for tour guides and operators, is excited about who Airbnb is bringing on board.
“They’re smart, savvy people and they seem eager to take ambitious action,” he said in January. “Not only are they hiring smart business-minded folks, but also looking at the importance of community, which is crucial and was key to the early success of their lodging business, before it became professionalized.”
Quinby agreed.
“Airbnb has a reputation for hiring outside of industry and always trying to be a disruptive force from the outside,” he said. “But the experiences sector is notoriously complex and difficult to crack.”
He referenced Oddo’s hire to the Airbnb team as an advisor and complimented both Oddo and the company.
“Stephen is an experienced entrepreneur who started as a tour guide and has a deep knowledge of experience design and execution and what it takes to create a successful experience operation,” Quinby said. “Bringing him on board is a signal that they are serious. They recognize they need to work closely with the operator community to build out their vision.”
And while there has been long held and widespread speculation around Experiences’ future, Bach said that the outlook among his circles has turned more positive recently.
“The communities I run touch a combined total of 25,000 tour guides and tour operators, and for years I’ve heard them express their love for the potential of Airbnb, but disappointment at the execution,” he said of Experiences. “But 2025 feels different.”
The Experiences story so far
Chesky has been outspoken about Airbnb’s Experiences relaunch for months.
On the company's Q2 2024 earnings call, he announced that Airbnb would relaunch Experiences months after it delisted thousands of Experiences after launching its pop-culture focused Icons program, which has since brought plenty of new users to the platform.
At the time, Chesky said the company had “learned a lot of lessons” from Experiences. He named five, including that Experiences should be made more affordable, more unique, need to be marketed, need to be advertised with videos and need to be discoverable in the Airbnb app.
If Airbnb manages to do those things then it believes it will have “a hit on our hands," he said.
Not long after, in September, the company opened its platform to new Experience listings and later in the month, Chesky opened up about his goals to expand Airbnb beyond stays and even Experiences.
“We do Airbnb. It's a distinct, standalone category,” said Chesky. “Take the Airbnb model and we're going to bring it to a lot of different categories.”
“Why would Airbnb just offer homes? Why couldn't we offer significantly more things? And that's the future of this company,” he said.
Offering more is the future of the company, he said at the time, and it appears Experiences will be first on the list of “more things,” as Chesky said in November during an earnings call.
“One thing that we've previewed to you was we are going to be reimagining Airbnb Experiences and those are going to be coming next May,” Chesky said at the time.
So, until May, the rumor mill continues.