Worldwide accommodations provider Airbnb is set on improving its Experiences service as it strives to expand on its sources of revenue. The move to highlight the customers’ potential experiences on Airbnb comes as a response to various regulations and government pressures that the company has faced the past year. So, if you’re looking for unique experiences on Airbnb, look no farther!
The company, based in San Francisco, California, is set to book thousands of travelers worldwide every month and are expecting to get their new service to a profitable level late next year. Airbnb is pushing to expand their offerings to not just rooms and houses for rent as the company is now eyeing to be a complete travel company. It announced this plan last year and have added quite a number of innovative features and services such as the ability to reserve restaurants or book excursions to go to local tourist spots.
The bold move was a response to regulations and government pressure that the company had to deal with in various areas of its operations. In fact, in some cities, Airbnb was forced to close its primary business of renting apartments to travelers. The company is hoping that its new business additions will take over its core business of house rentals. Airbnb also plans to shift their means of revenue to something that is harder for governments to restrict but still open to universal regulations.
Better Experiences Are Good For Overall Growth
Airbnb has already booked more than 260 million rooms and houses for rent since the company opened in August 2008. Experiences is one of four separate units within the company, and projections are positive that it will become profitable to the company by the end of the year.
Experiences on Airbnb is a service that lets people book a tour or a guide on local attractions with a local resident hosting and manning the activity or tour. Since the guide is an expert in the locale, the experience will be more genuine compared to a tour conducted by a third party group that simply employs guides from other places. Airbnb expects that by the second quarter of the year, the company will be on track to get one million bookings. According to a company spokesperson, the estimate is a very humble projection as it does not assume that the service and company will grow even more.
Experiences on Airbnb For the Win!
Experiences on Airbnb offers more than 5,000 tours in over 50 cities all over the world. The service offers a wide and varied list ranging from lessons on how kimonos are made in Tokyo, wine-tasting in California, and any local activity that a tourist could ever dream of doing. It also has unorthodox tours, such as glass-blowing in Chicago and discovering hidden stairways that can only be found by a San Francisco local. Markedly, before the year ends, Airbnb will add 25,000 more tours and experiences to their already impressive list. The company will charge the host of the tour a small 20 percent fee while the remaining 80 percent will be entirely set aside for or paid to the host. This figure is in contrast to the company’s rental service of only 3 percent since it gets 15 percent from the guests as reservation fees.
Indeed, in general, experiences will have a bold impact on the travel and tourism industry and ultimately change how people travel. Instead of going to tourist spots and well-photographed attractions, people will focus on the journey and, in turn, gain a more profound experience of the place and its people.
