Will Airbnb’s eventual relaunch of Experiences be successful?

Airbnb revealed its intent to eventually relaunch its Experiences sector Tuesday during its second quarter earnings call.

“Next year, we’re going to begin to expand Airbnb truly beyond a core business,” said Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. “And we’re going to relaunch Experiences.”

His announcement came just months after the short-term rental giant removed thousands of Experiences listed on its site following the launch of its Icons program that focuses on unique, pop-culture experiences.

They seem committed to the Icons model and leaning [into] unique, exclusive content … That might make for great [public relations], but it won’t make for a scalable business.

Douglas Quinby – Arival

“We’ve learned a lot of lessons from Experiences,” said Chesky.

He outlined five: Experiences need to be more affordable. They need to be “more unique to Airbnb.” Experiences need to be marketed with videos, not just photos. They need to be discoverable in the Airbnb app, and they need to be marketed.

“If we think we do those five things, we think we’ll have a hit on our hands, and we’re working on that,” said Chesky.

But industry experts’ opinions vary as to whether Airbnb will be able to pull off a successful relaunch of the vertical.

Mitch Bach, CEO and co-founder of TripSchool, a training organization for tour guides and operators, has been vocal about Airbnb’s moves with Experiences.

He told PhocusWire Wednesday, that the company is learning “once again” that building an experiences platform is harder to accomplish than building a short-term rental business.

“I find it surprising that they claim their lack of success was due to high costs and lack of exclusivity and video content, when I see other experiences platforms thriving by comparison, with higher price points and open connectivity,” said Bach.

The reason? Unless a company can bring experience hosts a satisfactory booking count, small business owners have to diversify their distribution strategy, Bach said.

Bach hopes the upcoming iteration of Experiences will solve some of what he called the “real problems” with the Experiences vertical. He named poor supplier support, lack of product design and customer service training and lack of API connectivity as problematic areas for Airbnb in the past.

Christian Watts, CEO of Magpie, took to LinkedIn to discuss the Airbnb leader’s announcement and the lessons learned. Watts quipped that maybe Chesky should’ve stopped at three lessons learned instead of five.

“Airbnb upset a lot of suppliers with a cull earlier this summer. But it’s Airbnb,” wrote Watts. “Operators will line up again to get their products loaded up. It’s all a bit vague right now, but I think they can make something work here.”

Tony Carne, founder of the Everything AI in Travel newsletter, said he doesn’t think Airbnb will see success in the area.

“They can’t make something work here,” he said in a response to Watts’ post.

Peter Syme, a strategic travel and tourism advisor, responded to the post to say Airbnb “should be” the most successful online travel agency in the experience space — but won’t be. “It is a fascinating corporate strategy failure story that keeps on giving.”

He continued: “They acquire customers at a cost no other [online travel agency] can get anywhere near. They have a brand awareness that no other OTA can get near. This ongoing story is a failure to use their strategic advantages.”

Douglas Quinby, co-founder and CEO of travel experiences support company Arival, told PhocusWire Airbnb has had an “enormous impact” on the sector.

“More than probably any of its competitors would like to admit,” said Quinby. “Our industry now more or less calls what used to be ’tours & activities’ as ‘experiences’ because of Airbnb.”

But Airbnb’s experiences business has been “sub-scale,” according to Quinby. He assessed Chesky’s commentary on Tuesday’s earnings call.

“They seem committed to the Icons model and leaning [into] unique, exclusive content,” said Quinby. “That might make for great [public relations], but it won’t make for a scalable business. Most travelers who go to Paris, whether they’re staying in a Hilton or an Airbnb, they want tickets to the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. And if Airbnb doesn’t figure out how to deliver them, there are plenty of others happy to step in.”

Quinby said his company remains skeptical “and ever hopeful” that Airbnb can “figure it out” when it comes to Experiences. “If and when they do, the results could be magical. There are still so many problems to solve in our industry.”