Airbnb has ventured beyond the accommodation space after eight years with the launch of Airbnb Trips – a mobile platform designed to give consumers a new resource for local information, tours and activity bookings and travel itinerary planning. Trips focuses on three key areas, being: Experiences, Places and Homes, with Flights and Services to be added in the future.
Trips will make travel magical again by immersing travelers in communities around the world. Get unprecedented access to local passions and interests, like violin making in Paris or marathon running in Kenya; discover the hidden gems that only locals know about via personal recommendations; and socialize with other travelers and locals at exciting events. Add that to three million bookable homes, and Airbnb becomes the one place to go for a truly different kind of travel experience.
Airbnb’s Trips maintains the “people-focused” approach to the rest of the trip beyond simply booking accommodation, as well as created another opportunity to generate revenue via people’s sharing of their passions and interests.
“Until now, Airbnb has been about homes,” said Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO. “Today, Airbnb is launching Trips, bringing together where you stay, what you do, and the people you meet all in one place. We want to make travel magical again by putting people back at the heart of every trip.”
Experiences
Airbnb Experiences are handcrafted activities designed and led by local experts, designed to give consumers a more immersive ‘local’ experience. With that, Airbnb has effectively entered the tours and activities space by allowing local experts to market these unique “Experiences”.
Trips launches with around 500 Experiences in 12 cities worldwide, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence, Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo and Seoul. From today, hosts in those listed as well as a further 39 cities worldwide can request to list their Experience.
A number of Experiences will also be available where guests can give something back to communities through non-profit organisations. In Detroit for example, Khali Sweeney provides an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at his Downtown Boxing Gym that provides local children with an after-school program of healthy snacks, homework time, and boxing lessons.
The app allows users to plan trips, book activities and engage with other users on a single platform
Places – Guidebooks, Meet ups and Audio Walks
Airbnb has also recruited cultural experts and guides to recommend ‘hidden gems’ within a particular destination through a series of 100 Insider Guidebooks that will launch in six cities – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Havana, Nairobi, Detroit and Seoul. More Insider Guidebooks will soon follow.
Airbnb’s Places also includes over one million individual recommendations worldwide from Airbnb’s home hosts, sharing their favourite local haunts in their neighborhoods, from cafes and restaurants to parks and other local attractions.
Airbnb is also forming a partnership with restaurant booking platform Resy that will allow people to make dining reservationsdirectly through the Airbnb app.
For the independent explorer, Airbnb has partnered with Detour to offer access to experiential audio walking tours. The initial launch will make audio tours available for Los Angeles. San Francisco, Paris, London, Tokyo and Seoul will also be available by Spring 2017.
Trips will also enable users and even local businesses to organise one-off ‘meet ups’ or regular events to encourage the Airbnb user community to actively connect and engage with each other in real life.
Making travel easy
Trip Itinerary is another new feature that will structure every traveller’s plans into one simple timeline, with the added ability to book and add Experiences, or things to do. Airbnb intends to embrace machine learning to gradually make increasingly personalised recommendations based on individual preferences and surrounding activities.
Identity Authentication
Perhaps most importantly, Airbnb has upped the ante on their security measures by introducing a new identity authentication process, to be used by the Airbnb Experiences Community. Hosts and guests will be asked to scan an official government ID (for example a passport, or driving license) and then take a simple selfie. After the ID is authenticated, the ID and selfie will be reviewed to confirm that both pictures appear to match.
The new identity authentication step is required for all Experiences users, and is also currently being tested for homes bookings. Trips also leverages Airbnb’s existing Trust & Safety measures including a 250+ person global 24/7 support team, secure payments, messaging, profiles and reviews, and a new $1 million liability insurance program for eligible Experience hosts.
