What Will Airbnb Launch Beyond Its Travel Core?

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky was very open with me in the interview I did with him earlier this week, where he tantalizingly hinted at how Airbnb will change in the next year, much of it predicated on AI.

In it, here are the few long range things he talked about: "We’re going to launch a whole bunch of new things in the next couple years...Basically the short answer is next May you’re going to see a whole new Airbnb. AI’s going to be at the center of it...The real vision is what if there Airbnb app could be almost like the ultimate host, the ultimate concierge... Each thing is going to get bigger and bigger. November will be pretty big. A year from now will be huge, it’ll be really big." He told me that in the short term, Airbnb will focus on improving customer service and summarizing reviews using AI, and by next year a conversational AI interface will come to the Airbnb app.

But what is coming beyond these somewhat obvious changes at Airbnb? Chesky elaborated on some of these in a podcast interview with Jason Calacanis on "This Week in Startups" including the hint that Airbnb is planning to move beyond its core of travel, in the next few years, though the timeline is fuzzy, at one time he said in the next year and later in the podcast he said nex