Airbnb is removing 5,000 Experiences, canceling future reservations

Less than one month after launching its pop-culture aligned exclusive Icons experiences in partnership with companies such as Disney, Pixar and Marvel, Airbnb has alerted about 5,000 tour and experience operators around the world that their experiences are being pulled from the platform.

“We’ve made the difficult decision to remove your Experience from Airbnb,” Airbnb wrote in an email sent to the affected operators on Friday. 

In a statement sent to Phocuswire, Airbnb said, “We regularly evaluate Experiences based on the host’s expertise, the activity’s uniqueness and local relevance, and guests’ ratings and reviews and remove those that continue to provide low quality experiences.”

In the email to operators, Airbnb said it removed experiences that do not “meet our standards.”

Airbnb will remove these listings on June 20, and reservations for June 20 and beyond will be canceled and refunds sent to guests. PhocusWire has contacted Airbnb for more details on this decision and will update this story as necessary.

In the Tourpreneur Facebook group, dozens of operators expressed shock at receiving the news.

“They are removing my experiences which had the most highest rating on Airbnb. I have no idea why they are doing so… I am sad because I was getting [a] good amount of bookings through Airbnb,” wrote Shwetank Tripathi, an India-based operator who received the notice that his walking tour is being removed. Tripathi has listed on Airbnb since 2019 and also provides a food tour, which is not being removed.   

Operators also expressed concern in the Facebook group about losing all of the customer reviews that are part of their Airbnb listing.

Mitch Bach, CEO of TripSchool and one of the leaders of the Tourpreneur community, said he has been hearing from operators who are very upset.

“Airbnb wanted unique tours developed exclusively for their platform, establishing exclusivity rules and foregoing API connectivity that effectively tied hosts exclusively to the Experiences ecosystem. That’s a fair business decision, but it means that suddenly removing so much tour inventory has an outsized impact for these small business owners who have come to rely sometimes solely on this source of income,” Bach said.

“Removing these Experience hosts from the platform via a terse DM [direct message] announcing they have three weeks’ notice to come up with a new business plan is a pretty poor taste, I’m sorry to say. This is, in fact, the worst fear of many tour operators who work with OTAs - being treated not as humans and small business owners, but like a can of soup suddenly not wanted on a store’s shelf and discarded at a moment’s notice. … It’s a warning sign for any tour and activity operator out there not to put all their eggs in one basket.”

And said Bruce Rosard, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Arival, “Unlike their unique lodging business, Airbnb is only one distribution platform for experiences. And since launched in 2016, they truly haven't been that successful compared to their peers. The in-destinations experiences industry keeps expecting something great from them, but this is another example of Airbnb letting the industry down when they have so much potential to be a great partner.”

A new strategy for Airbnb Experiences?

Earlier this month Airbnb unveiled its new Icons experiences - prompting mixed reaction from across the industry - and hinted the pop-culture aligned offerings are a sign of what is to come.

In the company’s call with financial analysts to discuss its Q1 2024 financial results, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said, “"Icons is like we’re a car company and we’re starting with a Formula One car. And very few people can experience a Formula One car, but it captures the magic, it captures the demand. It really expands the brand and increases our permission to be able to go into experiences, and then you kind of move down market. And one of our goals is going to be to bring the magic of Icons to everyone. ... We’ve really paved the way for next year.”

Airbnb first launched its Experiences division in 2016 and for the first few years regularly talked about its growth strategy. Then one year ago, in April 2023, the company announced it was pausing submissions of new listings of experiences.

Airbnb is offering operators whose listings are scheduled to be removed 30 days to appeal that decision.

*This story has been updated with a statement from Airbnb and confirmation that it removed about 5,000 experiences.