Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky is spending hundreds of millions to relaunch his travel company as an everything app. Fitness! Food! Microdermabrasion? A WIRED exclusive:
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Chesky had long believed that Airbnb should expand, but things got in the way—dealing with safety issues, fighting regulation, coping with the existential crisis of a global pandemic. Airbnb was in danger of being tagged with the word that ambitious entrepreneurs dread like the plague: mature.
This month, Airbnb will launch the first stage of its more than $200 million reinvention: a panoply of more than 10,000 vendors peddling a swath of services in 260 cities in 30 countries. It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: “experiences.”
It will be interesting to see how the company handles the inevitable cases of food poisoning or bad haircuts (and skeezy customers), but Airbnb can draw on its 17 years of experience with dirty sheets, all-night discos on the ground floor, or a host who is literally terrorizing you.
Chesky said people used Airbnb only once or twice a year. Now the company is retooling for more frequent access. Eventually, Chesky says, Airbnb will offer “hundreds” of services, perhaps as far-ranging as plumbing, cleaning, car repair, guitar lessons, and tutoring, and then take its 15% fee.
The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it. Thoughts?
Use Airbnb to find a barber, then work directly with the barber afterwards. They get one bite of the apple so make that 15% count. I've never traveled back to a place such that I could cut Airbnb out of the transactions.
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