I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Because those CEO are unhappy. They want more in their life, they want everything; so that maybe then, they'll be fulfilled.
The path to success is made by many failures; and when you get to success, you can't take the success, you can't be 'done', you need more success. It's a long form of chasing the next dopamine rush.
He probably hasn't felt more alive than the week he threw everything in the blender. It's a mix of issues that starts with childhood and leads to a life of addiction for more.
On the cover of a magazine, it's an inspiring story, but deep down it's a sad human trait.
All power to him though, it sure makes for interesting stories.
> “I’m 43 and at a crossroads, where I can either be almost done or just getting started,” he tells me. “There's a scenario where I'm basically done. Airbnb is very profitable. We've kind of, mostly, nailed vacation rentals. But we can do more.”
The irony is that they haven't even nailed vacation rentals. It's probably different in US, but in the rest of the world, wherever I've traveled in the rest of the world I got better deals by using a combination of Google Maps, Booking, Agoda, etc...
AirBNB from 10 years ago "nailed" it in a better way than AirBnB of 2025, but that's the customer's perspective. From the business perspective, they probably "nailed it" in a sense of squeezing as much juice out of the unwitting guest...
Because the writing is sort of on the wall for airbnb's current business model. Local regulations are finally catching up to them, limiting new listings or applying the same taxes and fees applied to regular hotels. And airbnb's are not cheaper anymore, and many times not any more convenient than a hotel, due crappy hosts and their excessive fees and regulations.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
There used to be very few hotels with kitchenettes, any space really beside just a bed.
There's way more suite and kitchenette options.
Lots of people travel for longer than just a night or two, or to travel beyond just business, where you might want to be able to actually enjoy being in your private space.
Hotels weren't really designed for this.
They wanted you to never be in your room, and instead upselling you at the bar.
Now, you can pretty easily find relatively affordable hotels that have many different types of rooms layouts for all different purposes.
Now, that defeats a lot of the point in having an AirBNB.
As you said, AirBNB is really only good if you're traveling somewhere with lousy hotel options, you're going to be staying somewhere for a long time, or traveling in a huge group, or you want to host a rager party or something...
My experiences in travel has been the same. Airbnb competition has been awesome just like Uber has been awesome for taxis in many places.
The narrative is always that "it's worse and making things worse" and gets blamed for everything such as the housing crisis which is insane but it's been an awesome asset to humanity. Not just Airbnb but other similar search lodging offerings.
Maybe I'm just not in the right cities but people say 2 things: Airbnbs are just as expensive as hotels and hotels have upgraded and I never see these two things as true. Airbnbs are typically cheaper than hotels and hotels, at least where I travel are still just a bed and a bath. Extended stay hotels have kitchenettes but extended stay hotels have always had kitchenettes and they were always the most expensive options because they are typically purchased by businessmen who have high budgets.
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.
As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.
It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.
Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
This depends on where you live. Not every country is like this and you sure can't call a taxi or have the same level of drivers (and add other ride share apps).
There's an incentive by many to just trash these competition apps and services but they've been a net good.
I will always love AirBnB for driving down prices by breaking the hotel cartels in major cities.
Over 10 years ago I rented a folding couch right off of Pearl ST. Boulder, CO.
I stayed in the living room of someones 1 bedroom apartment for $300 a night instead of 1k+ a night for the equivalent at what amounted to a travel lodge motel. The prices there were out of control, no inventory, just awful.
There are "plausible deniability" cartels everywhere, it's and it's always nice to see their grip on a region drop.
Can you actually? Every major city I've been to in the past five years is pretty harsh on that sort of thing. I'd happily pay $300 to avoid the risks of arrest and having all my stuff stolen.
Funny but couches can be pretty comfortable, and in the days of Airbnb being a monetized couchsurf, you'd at least wake up to fresh coffee
Safe place to stash your luggage is another matter, there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now too so if you are sleeping in the bus station at least you can put your baggage behind a locked door
> there's a dozen apps that cater to this need now
Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
> Before someone declared a need for buggy and unreliable locker apps, for decades prior you could deposit something called a "coin" into a slot which would allow you remove an equally archaic object called a "key" from the lock, which you would deposit in your pocket and be on your merry way.
Back in the '90s, sure, but then some people flew a plane into a tower block and apparently this meant we need to pay $20 for some minimum wage dude to put our bags on a shelf that's only open 9-5 instead.
DC Union station charged me I think 10usd per bag per 24hr , no smaller unit accommodated, but I decided $30 was worth it to enjoy my Amtrak layover for 3 hours and walked to the botanic garden unencumbered
Vienna Austria has a great set of lockers at their central station, I think I paid 3 or 4 euro for 12 hours for a locker. Venice too, but I did not anticipate that Venice has nowhere to lock up a bicycle, so I ended up paying 18 euro to store my "oversize luggage" for the day.
All in all I found European train stations to have better accommodations than American (makes sense because people actually use them everyday, 100+ trains a day in Berlin vs a place like Cincinnati with 2 trains a day)
Bilbao Spain I was glad to find a convenience store that was on the apps but also just accepted 5 euro to take my bags into their store room a few hours. I bet most hotel receptions would make that deal with you too.
Nador, Morocco I could not find anyone to take my luggage, the train station attendant told me to try the bus station, but the bus station attendant refused without my having a bus ticket, "even with cash?" "Even with cash"
I don't get airbnbs because they're cheaper, I get them because I want to rent something other than a hotel room. If best western had in-laws or 1br quadplexes I'd be happy to stay there, but most hotels I've stayed at are bad rooms in bad locations that almost always include at least one negative surprise every trip, and as you move up to more expensive ones they somehow get fancier but worse.
For travel it’s just an option and always will be. Thats okay because the travel use case only hits most people once or twice a year. The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home. The app update and launch into these lifestyle categories are the starting point of this.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
> The future of Airbnb was and always will be using that option as entry point into your life at home.
The future of Airbnb was and always will be a place to book stays in someone's home. These other things they are doing are a bad joke that will at best waste money for no gain, and at worst will cause their actual business to suffer. Trying to be all things to all people is idiocy, stick to what you're good at.
a bad joke is a little harsh. It's worth trying to do a few new things. Having stayed in many airbnbs, I have wondered why they don't start adding a menu of things I can do once I am there. It feels like a space they could deploy some offerings and have the attention of their customer. There are bad jokes that cost a lot more money. Look at Apple Vision Pro. I think this is relatively cheap vs. their cash flow.
You can get the same experience with VRBO. People list in both usually. AirBNB hasn’t cornered the market. Plus, VRBO or sites like VacationRentals pre dated AirBNB
They actually don't list on both usually. Go lookup the data before you start making statements like that. In fact just go punch this into Google:
"how much of airbnb inventory is unique?"
I’m basing it on personal experience looking into renting a vacation rental and I have family who list on both. I am not going to google that because I know what is true
That's quite a broad assumption based on anecdotal evidence, you know what's true based on your few experiences renting and from a few listings your immediate family has, how can you even believe it's true based on this flimsy data?
Quick edit: just searched on both VRBO and Airbnb for rentals in my city for the same date range, VRBO shows me 191 options, Airbnb shows 330 options.
My point already shows that your whole assumption is flawed, which was entirely my point... You don't need to argue but it'd be in good faith to at least acknowledge that your point has no basis at all, it's just your feeling, not a point.
By the way, I live in a capital city in Europe so the discrepancies between listings would probably translate to many other places...
> I cannot for the life of me figure out why these companies don't just stick to their core.
Greed. Founders and employees who cannot understand the value of a sustainable business that does one thing well and keeps people employed. We shouldn't seek to grow indefinitely, we should seek to reach comfortable levels of success and then focus our efforts on rewarding the people who are clients and employees maximally.
Yeah, I spent the whole time reading this article wondering "has this man lost his mind?". Airbnb works great for what it is. But nobody wants it to be an "everything" platform, and all that the CEO is accomplishing is wasting money chasing ventures that have no real chance of success. And that's if those ventures don't cause their actual business to suffer because resources are being spent elsewhere.
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
“ Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company”
Not at all. Basically all reviews on Airbnb are positive bc of the threat of retaliation. Your reviews are like your social credit score, not worth threatening to post a negative but honest review.
How? The reviews aren’t visible until after the window of time to review is closed or the review has already been submitted. AFAIK there’s no way to retaliate.
There is no threat of retaliation for reviews because hosts and guests can't see each other's reviews until the review period is expired or they have already left their own review.
The Airbnb review process is so weird I can only assume it’s actually broken.
Give someone three stars; which is “okay” (airbnbs own language) and you’re forced into specifying why a review (or part of a review) got three stars. The canned reasons are pretty negative (“felt unsafe”, etc). The “write in your own reason” option is limited to 50 characters.
So you’re incentivized to select 4 or 5 stars which allows you to click through the review without any other entry requirements.
I only give truthful reviews and I’ve only had three cases (out of ~70 stays) where the host was an asshat in response.
I think paypal is probably an example of why this is probably imposible for a publicly traded company.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
"Duty to the shareholders": if you aren't the CEO growing revenue quarter over quarter, then your mostly stock compensation is worthless and the board is interviewing replacements.
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.