May 16, 2025 • 9 mins
Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO and Cofounder discusses the company's app redesign and emphasis on services and experience.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Airbnb out with a redesign app that puts a great
emphasis on services, on one of the kind experiences. But
this is as of course, anxiety remains about consumer sentiment,
about our desire to travel abroad. Right now, let's get
through all of that with Airbnb's plans. We're John by CEO,
Brian Chesky, Brian Welcome and airbmb more than a home.
You want to be sort of an Airbnb for the
(00:21):
world and for services.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Tell us the revenue drivers here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Why is more experiences, more services going to lead to
a bigger business and investable opportunity.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, I mean as big as the Verbnb is, and
we do around ninety billion dollars a year in bookings.
There's so much greater opportunity for people to monetize the biggest.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Asset in their life. And it's not their home, it's
their time.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And so what if all the people's skills, all the
people's passion, their expertise could be monetized. A huge percent
of the jobs in the United States around the world
are becoming essentially services jobs. And there is no Amazon
for services. You know, people say Amazon's the everything stored
It's kind of the everything in a cardboard box store.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
But there's this whole other world. It requires trust, It requires.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Two people to have an exchange between one another. I
think that's where airbyscore competency is. What we built is
an extensible platform that's not limited to homes.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
What's interesting is the chefs, the massages, the other key
at services that you're offering do have to be vetted? Yes,
that's when you get the scale. How are you going
to scale that if you're doing this on a person
to person basis, How much does mL then take over?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I mean, I mean a lot of what we do,
and I think a lot of what everyone in technology
does is you start things by hand, You learn the rules,
and you train the technology, and the technology takes over
either does it or augments the people.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And that's exactly what it was like here.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We start very much by hand, and then we build
tools to automate the task that people are doing.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Brian, I started using Airbnb in the UK around twenty
ten eleven when I went to college, right, and that
was before Uber even launched in the UK. And when
I think about the development of platforms and app technologies
like yours, one point of difference than Airbnb has versus
n Uber is that you don't yet have advertising, whereas
(02:06):
you look at Uber's ad growth now for them on
the investor side, it's a really big thing.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
How do you think about that? I think it's a
huge opportunity. You know, one of the frameworks I really
like around how to invest is you want to invest
in the most perishable opportunities first, and so we think
a really perishable opportunity is, you know, launching services and experiences.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
The timing is right.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
We think advertising is a huge opportunity for us. It's
an inevitable opportunity for us, but we don't think it's
the most parishal opportunity, so it hasn't been something we've
prioritized in our near term roadmap. I also think it's
really good to first extend our platform from homes to services, experiences.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
In beyond, so when we build things, we can build.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Them as a horizontal platform inevitable.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
That's that's really interesting. You've got a lot of credit
this week for the relaunch of the app and its
ability to give you some long term growth. I'd just
be grateful to hear how you think it will drive
long term growth. I think from the streets perspective, that's
more about revenue growth and profit, but maybe scale of
the platform as well.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I think there's three things.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Number one, there's a whole bunch of people who don't
book Airbnbs because they don't come with services.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
They go to hotels.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So what if you get affer all the services of
a hotel and more in a Airbnb. So that's one
way we actually could grow is to get a lot
more customers. The second way we can grow is a
lot of people use Airbnb, but the only book one
thing on the reservation home, so we can essentially get
a greater share of wallet on the trip. The third
and the longest term opportunity is local demand. We think
(03:41):
a lot of these services and experiences that we're initially
building out for travel consumers are eventually going to be things.
Are going to want a book in your own city,
and that is an even significantly greater market. So there's
really these three types of horizons.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Coast playing with Megandee Stallion, learning volleyball within Olympian in Rio.
How did you get these one off experiences? I mean,
is this making some phone calls?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean like, well a year ago we launched icons
We're sure these extraordinary experiences hosted by the biggest names
and culture we had. You know, we've made the uphouse
float in the sky, and we did all these really
cool experiences, and then we started thinking to ourselves, how
do we bring that magic to experiences? And we built
this network of really interesting celebrities and global icons. And
one of the things that we found is they a
(04:23):
lot of them heard about what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They reached out to us.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think a lot of these global celebrities want to
connect direct with their fans. They don't just want to
have a parasocial relationship on social media. And I think
the more we talk about AI, the more we start
to realize that we are accelerating our life living in
a digital realm. We're spending more and more time on devices,
and we want to be the kind of company they're
getting people off devices into the real world just as
(04:47):
a balance, and I think that could be a very
exciting proposition for the future.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
As you can imagine, this show's been talking about AI
relentlessly for the last three years, but we took a pause,
started talking about taris and the economy relentlessly. You said,
now it's the perfect moment to be launching these services
and experiences. Why in this environment where you saw consumer
sentiment today is woefully low.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I mean, well, number one, we reported really really good
growth within travel, So I think people are still traveling,
and I think when the consumer sentiment is and steady,
they still want to travel, but they often want to
find more affordable options.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Airbombs a great way to do that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
But beyond that, this is a very long term bet
that we're making over the next five years, and I
think this will endure across any kind of economy.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's just good to remind people.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Airboby started during the Great recession of two thousand and eight,
and so I think a lot of the great businesses
are starting during you know, kind of a weekend economy.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Brian, you're pivoting to founder mode, right, Yeah, how's that
going to help Airbnb navigate the world that it's in
right now?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I think founder mode basically just means like running a
large company with the hands on approach, where you're in
the details, your leaders in the details, and everyone's rolling
in the same direction like a startup. I think those
principles are more important now than ever with this new
technological revolution.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's in front of us.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
You need people that are able to basically have their
hands on the steering wheel and not be in essentially
a self driving car, which is you know how more
professional managers typically run things. So I think this is
the perfect time to lean into the future, to put
the pederal the metal, put your hand in the steering wheel,
and really drive transformation. And I think a lot of
the great companies in history have been led that way.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
With that in mind.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Airbnb the technology company, what's its call competency? What are
your people really good at that other companies are not?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I think a few things all probably a few, but
I'll highlight just two on the right now.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
The first is our application.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I think we have one of the most beautifully well
designed and build apps in the world. We're able to
show it is incredibly intuitive. I know we I believe
we're one of the best design teams in the world.
So we have really rate applications and so take AI.
There's a lot of development on the application, the on
the large language model layer, but the applications haven't seen
a lot of development. If you pick up your phone,
(07:11):
almost every app looks exactly like it did before. Generative
AI came on the scene. So that's the first thing.
The second is probably even more important the offline world.
We're really good at building apps, but I think we're
even better at designing the system of trust between two
strangers to live together. I mean, nearly four million people
a day live together in Airbnb and nearly every country
(07:32):
in the world. Think about all the ways you need
to keep people safe, handle their issues, match supply and demand,
facilitate money, you know, make sure they're having great experiences.
There's so much more the offline world the Airbnb. When
people Seebnb, they see an app, and the app is
just to scratch the surface of our community.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I love that you're.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Talking online and offline. Briefly, when you're thinking about Karna,
having to decide that actually, all the AI focus has
to be unwound a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Customers of this.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Is not working as they want to bring people back.
You're bringing AI to customer service. How's that going? And
how much do you have to rely on people's stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
We still have to rely a lot on people.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think it's going incredibly well. We launched a customer
service agent in the United States to all English speaking users.
Where now if you need help, you can reach out
to an AI customer service agent.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's a front line.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
It's been trained on, you know, hundreds of millions of
customer trips to be able to be twenty four to
seven and be an escalation point to humans or.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Be able to answer the question themselves.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But I think the key lesson here is you don't
want to rush into a trend. I think that people
got really really excited AI be invitably thought it's the future.
It's going to do all these tasks in the future.
All that's true, but you can't skip steps and people
want things to work, and so, you know, we didn't
want it to be an AI lab. We wanted to
be something people could trust, and so we've been very
very careful about focusing on solving real problems responsibly with
(08:54):
a model that doesn't hallucinate.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And I think that's what we're doing
Speaker 4 (08:58):
At BNBC, you know, and co founder Branchester, it's great
to have you back on Bloombog technology.
Airbnb out with a redesign app that puts a great
emphasis on services, on one of the kind experiences. But
this is as of course, anxiety remains about consumer sentiment,
about our desire to travel abroad. Right now, let's get
through all of that with Airbnb's plans. We're John by CEO,
Brian Chesky, Brian Welcome and airbmb more than a home.
You want to be sort of an Airbnb for the
(00:21):
world and for services.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Tell us the revenue drivers here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Why is more experiences, more services going to lead to
a bigger business and investable opportunity.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Well, I mean as big as the Verbnb is, and
we do around ninety billion dollars a year in bookings.
There's so much greater opportunity for people to monetize the biggest.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Asset in their life. And it's not their home, it's
their time.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
And so what if all the people's skills, all the
people's passion, their expertise could be monetized. A huge percent
of the jobs in the United States around the world
are becoming essentially services jobs. And there is no Amazon
for services. You know, people say Amazon's the everything stored
It's kind of the everything in a cardboard box store.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
But there's this whole other world. It requires trust, It requires.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Two people to have an exchange between one another. I
think that's where airbyscore competency is. What we built is
an extensible platform that's not limited to homes.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
What's interesting is the chefs, the massages, the other key
at services that you're offering do have to be vetted? Yes,
that's when you get the scale. How are you going
to scale that if you're doing this on a person
to person basis, How much does mL then take over?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I mean, I mean a lot of what we do,
and I think a lot of what everyone in technology
does is you start things by hand, You learn the rules,
and you train the technology, and the technology takes over
either does it or augments the people.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And that's exactly what it was like here.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We start very much by hand, and then we build
tools to automate the task that people are doing.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Brian, I started using Airbnb in the UK around twenty
ten eleven when I went to college, right, and that
was before Uber even launched in the UK. And when
I think about the development of platforms and app technologies
like yours, one point of difference than Airbnb has versus
n Uber is that you don't yet have advertising, whereas
(02:06):
you look at Uber's ad growth now for them on
the investor side, it's a really big thing.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
How do you think about that? I think it's a
huge opportunity. You know, one of the frameworks I really
like around how to invest is you want to invest
in the most perishable opportunities first, and so we think
a really perishable opportunity is, you know, launching services and experiences.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
The timing is right.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
We think advertising is a huge opportunity for us. It's
an inevitable opportunity for us, but we don't think it's
the most parishal opportunity, so it hasn't been something we've
prioritized in our near term roadmap. I also think it's
really good to first extend our platform from homes to services, experiences.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
In beyond, so when we build things, we can build.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Them as a horizontal platform inevitable.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
That's that's really interesting. You've got a lot of credit
this week for the relaunch of the app and its
ability to give you some long term growth. I'd just
be grateful to hear how you think it will drive
long term growth. I think from the streets perspective, that's
more about revenue growth and profit, but maybe scale of
the platform as well.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
I think there's three things.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Number one, there's a whole bunch of people who don't
book Airbnbs because they don't come with services.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
They go to hotels.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So what if you get affer all the services of
a hotel and more in a Airbnb. So that's one
way we actually could grow is to get a lot
more customers. The second way we can grow is a
lot of people use Airbnb, but the only book one
thing on the reservation home, so we can essentially get
a greater share of wallet on the trip. The third
and the longest term opportunity is local demand. We think
(03:41):
a lot of these services and experiences that we're initially
building out for travel consumers are eventually going to be things.
Are going to want a book in your own city,
and that is an even significantly greater market. So there's
really these three types of horizons.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Coast playing with Megandee Stallion, learning volleyball within Olympian in Rio.
How did you get these one off experiences? I mean,
is this making some phone calls?
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean like, well a year ago we launched icons
We're sure these extraordinary experiences hosted by the biggest names
and culture we had. You know, we've made the uphouse
float in the sky, and we did all these really
cool experiences, and then we started thinking to ourselves, how
do we bring that magic to experiences? And we built
this network of really interesting celebrities and global icons. And
one of the things that we found is they a
(04:23):
lot of them heard about what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They reached out to us.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I think a lot of these global celebrities want to
connect direct with their fans. They don't just want to
have a parasocial relationship on social media. And I think
the more we talk about AI, the more we start
to realize that we are accelerating our life living in
a digital realm. We're spending more and more time on devices,
and we want to be the kind of company they're
getting people off devices into the real world just as
(04:47):
a balance, and I think that could be a very
exciting proposition for the future.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
As you can imagine, this show's been talking about AI
relentlessly for the last three years, but we took a pause,
started talking about taris and the economy relentlessly. You said,
now it's the perfect moment to be launching these services
and experiences. Why in this environment where you saw consumer
sentiment today is woefully low.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
I mean, well, number one, we reported really really good
growth within travel, So I think people are still traveling,
and I think when the consumer sentiment is and steady,
they still want to travel, but they often want to
find more affordable options.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Airbombs a great way to do that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
But beyond that, this is a very long term bet
that we're making over the next five years, and I
think this will endure across any kind of economy.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It's just good to remind people.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Airboby started during the Great recession of two thousand and eight,
and so I think a lot of the great businesses
are starting during you know, kind of a weekend economy.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Brian, you're pivoting to founder mode, right, Yeah, how's that
going to help Airbnb navigate the world that it's in
right now?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I think founder mode basically just means like running a
large company with the hands on approach, where you're in
the details, your leaders in the details, and everyone's rolling
in the same direction like a startup. I think those
principles are more important now than ever with this new
technological revolution.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's in front of us.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
You need people that are able to basically have their
hands on the steering wheel and not be in essentially
a self driving car, which is you know how more
professional managers typically run things. So I think this is
the perfect time to lean into the future, to put
the pederal the metal, put your hand in the steering wheel,
and really drive transformation. And I think a lot of
the great companies in history have been led that way.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
With that in mind.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Airbnb the technology company, what's its call competency? What are
your people really good at that other companies are not?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I think a few things all probably a few, but
I'll highlight just two on the right now.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
The first is our application.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I think we have one of the most beautifully well
designed and build apps in the world. We're able to
show it is incredibly intuitive. I know we I believe
we're one of the best design teams in the world.
So we have really rate applications and so take AI.
There's a lot of development on the application, the on
the large language model layer, but the applications haven't seen
a lot of development. If you pick up your phone,
(07:11):
almost every app looks exactly like it did before. Generative
AI came on the scene. So that's the first thing.
The second is probably even more important the offline world.
We're really good at building apps, but I think we're
even better at designing the system of trust between two
strangers to live together. I mean, nearly four million people
a day live together in Airbnb and nearly every country
(07:32):
in the world. Think about all the ways you need
to keep people safe, handle their issues, match supply and demand,
facilitate money, you know, make sure they're having great experiences.
There's so much more the offline world the Airbnb. When
people Seebnb, they see an app, and the app is
just to scratch the surface of our community.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
I love that you're.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Talking online and offline. Briefly, when you're thinking about Karna,
having to decide that actually, all the AI focus has
to be unwound a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Customers of this.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Is not working as they want to bring people back.
You're bringing AI to customer service. How's that going? And
how much do you have to rely on people's stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
We still have to rely a lot on people.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
I think it's going incredibly well. We launched a customer
service agent in the United States to all English speaking users.
Where now if you need help, you can reach out
to an AI customer service agent.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's a front line.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
It's been trained on, you know, hundreds of millions of
customer trips to be able to be twenty four to
seven and be an escalation point to humans or.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Be able to answer the question themselves.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
But I think the key lesson here is you don't
want to rush into a trend. I think that people
got really really excited AI be invitably thought it's the future.
It's going to do all these tasks in the future.
All that's true, but you can't skip steps and people
want things to work, and so, you know, we didn't
want it to be an AI lab. We wanted to
be something people could trust, and so we've been very
very careful about focusing on solving real problems responsibly with
(08:54):
a model that doesn't hallucinate.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And I think that's what we're doing
Speaker 4 (08:58):
At BNBC, you know, and co founder Branchester, it's great
to have you back on Bloombog technology.
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