Airbnb’s new “Services” app is being demolished by critics, here is why CEO Brian Chesky should be excited

Brian Chesky took the stage in the center of Los Angeles on Tuesday to tell a story about the future.

This story went such a thing: 17 years ago, when Chesky co -founded AirbnbPeople were skeptical. Whoever would ever stay in a stranger’s house, they snore. (In 2008, Seven investors rejected The company, rejecting what would have been a 10% participation for $ 150,000.) But the startup challenged the odds: it is now a verb, noun and a Fortune 500 public trade company with a market lid of $ 84 million.

Now, Chesky explained, it was time for the company to combine a new path again redefining what “Airbnb” means something.

With Airbnb services recently not considered and an Airbnb relaunched experiences, Chesky painted an image of a world where you trust Airbnb as a center for a unique holiday experience. Chesky spoke of Airbnb as a market for unforgettable moments, once in his life. Think: to make a pasta with a chef in Rome, dance with a k-pop star in Seoul, explore Notre Dame with a restaurants, fight with a luchador in Mexico City or even a Sunday with Patrick Mahomes.

Chesky closed with a new tag: “You can now Airbnb more than an Airbnb”. The idea is that “Airbnb” a holiday massage, and would start massaging, makeup artists and hair stylists not only on vacation, but also when you are at home. In short, it was the launch of a super -APP that was a slight repudiation of technology … ” Somewhere on the way, something was derived, and we started spending more time looking at the screens and less time in the real world, ” Chesky told the audience, and an incredibly silicon Valley screen.

This presentation, in which Chesky put his best Person “Founding Mode” On the screen, he encountered fanfare and critical. Zynga Founder Mark Pincus greeted Chesky’s performance as “Steve Jobs-Esque. “” Others were skeptical That Airbnb users will go to the application in their daily lives and not for the bad, and questioned the market price used by Airbnb.

The truth, almost definitely, is somewhere in the middle.

There are some ways that the idea makes good sense. For example, if one of the criticism of staying in an Airbnb is that you lose the comforts of a hotel, it follows that the company would like to solve it. The trip is a spectacular fragmented industry and Airbnb is not alone to see the level of white space open to consolidation –Mckinsey has dear That the global travel experience market is an opportunity worth 1 trillion dollars, but is scattered between some online platforms and “countless smaller operators”.

At the same time, Airbnb’s ambition to become a destination of experiences is not new; The Airbnb product experiments, after all, is a relaunch.

Airbnb’s head of Finance, Ellie Mertz, described the company’s previous effort as a victim of circumstances. “We launched experiences many years ago,” Mertz said in an interview. “We started climbing it.

With the advantage of a “ multi -year break ”, Airbnb reimaginated experiences, said Mertz, providing more flexible prices, a stronger review to secure the highest quality offers and a redesigned application that facilitates travelers to find and reserve experiences that adapt to their trip.

“The ongoing year is about launch,” he said. “We want to put these products and services in the hands of our consumers … Our ambition is to promote these businesses so that they are autonomously collaborating with materials on our upper line. What Brian and I have said in the past is that the ambition is that we could build these businesses in income flow of $ 1 billion in a magnitude order, in a period of three years.”

For a company that generated income of $ 11.1 billion last year, an additional dollars on the upper line could make sense. But the fact that income will require a lot of work and money as Airbnb tries to create new consumption habits.

To help the Airbnb experiences, the Airbnb Original Llança company: a set of premium experiences, based on Starpower. For example, Megan Thee Stallion was in the room, while Chesky made known to the original Airbnb that the company curated with her: one day with the star rapper in an especially built anime house. The goal of experiences like this is that these are days when you remember the rest of your life.

At the end of the day, I was amazing at a surprising experience: a rally listening party at the rapper, where the beloved indie rapper prevented about ten new songs in a room full of influential and, well, me. We sat in a room full of beans bag, green headphones and screens full of letters. It was an hour and a half where the world stopped.

He was intimate, amazing and the type of Starpower Marshal, which was quite authentic: Chance the Rapper, whose latest study album came out in 2019, he stood in front of the room when the demonstration ended, answering questions about his music that so many people have heard. Airbnb did not share details on the financial terms involved in collaboration with these celebrities, although it seems certain that it is whatever (income quota, a quota or some other agreement), is not cheap.

And this reaches the complicated part of what Airbnb is trying to do, as it puts a new addition to a scale shared economy. I don’t think it is impossible for Airbnb’s push to these new vertical works, I might want to reserve a makeup artist through Airbnb as a consumer, but I don’t know if you can heal a market for unique and intimate experiences. They are often limited and magic is difficult to select quality globally.

The idea is a bit paradoxical and it can be very good that it does not work as critics think. At the same time, you have to ask yourself, it can also be an idea to stay in other holiday homes.

This story originally presented to Fortune.com

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