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