Airbnb is evolving in two directions. On the ground, they want to compete with hotels by offering a myriad of services. Online, we use AI and the people in the Airbnb network to help you discover travel.
As part of its fall product update, the company is expanding its grocery delivery offering to the app it released last year, adding services such as meal delivery in select locations, laundry, baby equipment rentals, and ski and boat rentals.
The second major feature is AI search. The company has taken a cautious approach to rolling out its AI capabilities, with CEO Brian Chesky choosing to avoid chatbot-like interfaces. Earlier this year, he teased new search features for real estate discovery.
Users can now turn on a toggle to search for properties via text or voice prompts. When you start a search, the interface displays dynamic filters based on your preferences. For example, if you type “baby” into the AI search filter, Airbnb will automatically show you additional filters like cribs, play areas, and children’s books and toys.
The platform uses AI to pull out relevant characteristics of properties and allows you to compare properties in your wishlist through AI-powered summaries and reviews.
“We’re finally making our first foray into AI search, and what you’re seeing is just the beginning of that. And over the next few months, we’re going to iterate on this very quickly. Creating AI search isn’t hard. It’s hard to create AI search in e-commerce when you have $100 billion flowing into your platform,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told TechCrunch.
“Anyone can vibe-code a search feature, but doing something to avoid losing conversion rates is the hard part.”
The company is also ramping up its social features to encourage people to travel more and book additional experiences like tastings and craft workshops. Last year, the app started allowing users to connect with other travelers and friends on its platform.
Travelers can now see maps based on their connections’ past or upcoming trips. Tap on a trip to see where your connections stayed and what experiences they were looking for. Those who value privacy also have the option of not sharing their travels with others.
Airbnb also creates neighborhood pages based on guest reviews and other sources to help travelers find places to eat and things to do.
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