Airbnb Launches Trips, Its Big Tours and Activities Gamble

Airbnb is making good on its global campaign promise to help guests "live there" with its newest product launch. Today, the San Francisco-based company debuted Trips, the company's official, formal foray into tours and activities, as well as Places, which allows users to find highly curated, hand-picked recommendations for meetups, restaurants, and events in a destination. The company also hinted at the debut of Airbnb Flights, and noted that guests can eventually book car rentals, restaurant reservations, and grocery delivery services through the updated Airbnb app. All of these new products point to Airbnb's ambitions of becoming a bonafide "super brand of travel" by combining all of these services into a single travel platform. It's clear that with today's announcement, Airbnb doesn't just want to be an accommodations provider or even an online travel agency. It wants to be all of the above, as well as your go-to for recommendations, finding new friends, making restaurant reservations, booking car rentals, and even booking flights, down the line. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky made the announcement today on the first day of the company's annual Airbnb Open conference in Los Angeles, which welcomed more than 7,000 hosts and guests from 100 countries worldwide. "You can spend as much time planning your trip, as on your trip," Chesky said. "We want to fix this ... Welcome to the world of Trips, where we put Homes, Experiences, and Places together all in one place. We designed this to be both magical and easy." Airbnb's solution for accomplishing this? To debut tours and activities (Trips), as well as combine the functions of other travel apps with recommendations, curated event suggestions, meetups in its new Places function, and to enhance the company's overall Homes product as well. How Trips Work Airbnb's Trips are mostly peer-to-peer (Chesky said 10 percent were organized by hosts who also happen to have home listings on Airbnb), but with a twist. In addition to offering experiences that are hosted by individuals, Airbnb also partnered with some nonprofits as well to provide unique Social Impact Experiences for guests. To start, Airbnb will offer Trips in 12 cities (Detroit, London, Paris, Nairobi, Havana, SF, Cape Town, Florence, Miami, Seoul, Tokyo, and Los Angeles) with hopes of expanding to 50 cities worldwide by 2017. Airbnb guests can book these trips similarly to how they would book a home to stay in. Each trip is presented al