Airbnb to Expand Services with New Lifestyle Offerings, Social Features, and AI Support

Airbnb is launching new services to let travelers book lifestyle activities and in-home experiences directly through the app, according to a report by TechCrunch. With this, the users can now book services like massages, chef-prepared meals, haircuts, or join cultural experiences, either during a stay or independently.

This move is part of a big app update, aiming to offer more than just stays. The company is also launching Airbnb Originals, social attributes, and an AI-assisted customer support agent to optimise the travel experience.

Scaling Airbnb – In-App Services and Experiences

Airbnb is adding 10 categories of lifestyle services and 19 categories of experiences across the globe. These include personal services such as chefs, spa treatments, photography, personal training, hair, nails, and makeup. These Airbnb lifestyle services shall be offered in 100 cities in 8 countries.

Experiences are cultural tours, cooking classes, art workshops, shopping, outdoor and wildlife activities, as well as wellness sessions. These are available in 1,000 cities worldwide.

Users can book such services whilst staying in an Airbnb or use it without booking a home. According to Judson Coplan, Airbnb’s VP of Product Marketing, “These experiences and services are a way to experience a city like a local. We think that these are natural extensions to home stays.”

Airbnb will ensure quality by checking service provider’s experience, online presence, licenses, and education. Airbnb will take a 15% cut from services and a 20% cut from experiences. Yet, there will be a single monetary sum visible upon reservation to the customers.

The company also introduced Airbnb Originals, which will provide exclusive activities with celebrities. Examples are baking pastries at French Bastards bakery with chef Raphaelle Elbaz’ or play Beach Volleyball in Brazil with Olympian Carolina Solberg.

Airbnb’s New App Adds More Social and Planning Features

The new version of the app will now reflect three main categories. Stays, Services, and Experiences. When the users make an order for a trip, the app will still provide them with services and experiences that correspond to that place.

Hosts will have better tools to deal with their listings, calendars, and bookings for these new offerings.

Later this year, Airbnb will add more social features. A new group chat function will allow users who shared an experience to talk, share photos, and recommend other activities. The company hopes this will encourage more travel and connection.

Coplan shared, “Travel is something about connections. Whether it’s your host, people you travel with, or people you meet along the way, there is… a desire to connect with other people.”

Airbnb also saw a 15x increase in completed profiles by users after making improvements to the profiles last year, which enables guests to elaborate more about themselves, where they live, or the language(s) that they speak.

AI Assistant to Power Airbnb Customer Support

In their efforts to improve customer support, Airbnb now has an AI-powered customer service agent. The new version has direct Facebook chat responses instead of connecting to help articles, as it is with the old version. For now, it’s only for English-speaking users in the U.S. and will come out to the wider audience later this year.

Airbnb intends to make the AI assistant more effective by introducing personalized answers, suggestions of trips, and short buttons, such as “Cancel Booking”. This AI has previously been mentioned by CEO Brian Chesky, who said that this AI will become a virtual trip concierge.

Coplan further added that in the course of time, the AI assistant will serve in assisting the users in inspiration and planning, a fact that makes it an integral part of the Airbnb experience.