Airbnb to launch hotel interface

“The concrete thing is we are now getting serious about hotels,” Chesky said while on a video call at Skift Global Forum. “We bought HotelTonight. We always had intended to integrate it into Airbnb. Then the pandemic hit, and similar to Experiences, we put everything on hold.”

Chesky shared, as he has in the past, that Airbnb rebuilt its tech from the ground up for the launch of its Services and relaunch of its Experiences verticals. The work done can also be applied to hotels, Chesky said Tuesday, noting that like a service includes different offerings, a hotel has different rooms.

“We're going to bring a lot of boutiques and a lot of independent hotels on Airbnb, what we found is that the vast majority of people that come to Airbnb, if they don't find a home they like, they go to another website to book a hotel,” he said. “[If] we just have hotels there, then they're gonna get an infinite amount of bookings, because we are accessed by 1.6 billion devices a year.”

Airbnb, he said, is “building a first class” interface to showcase homes, inns and bed and breakfasts.

"It will integrated into the core tab, the ‘Homes’ tab will, you know, maybe it changes to the word ‘Stays’, and there will be a carousel— like those interface rows that you swipe—we're going to pilot it in a few different cities, including New York, and we'll see how it goes.”

By Morgan Hines