The Background
Yesterday, Airbnb made its biggest announcement in years.
After months of hints – like disclosing $250M in spend on new business lines, recruiting licensed tour operators, and CEO Brian Chesky declaring the start of “a new Airbnb,” with ambitions to become the Amazon of travel – the company finally showed its hand.
At the 2025 Summer Release event, Chesky said they “had to basically rebuild the company from the ground up,” including standing up entirely new departments.
The result: a fully redesigned app, a relaunch of Experiences, and a brand-new vertical called Airbnb Services.
The goal? To connect more of the guest’s end-to-end travel journey - from booking a place to stay, to eating, exploring, and relaxing.
Here’s what changed – and what it means for hosts.
3 Key Changes Airbnb Hosts Need to Know
1. All-New Airbnb App Design
- Completely redesigned to integrate 3 main categories: Homes, Services, and Experiences
- New app features include:
- Explore tab: Homepage for discovering Homes, Experiences, and Services
- Trips tab: Advanced travel itinerary with scheduling
- Enhanced messaging with photo/video sharing
- Redesigned user profiles
- Host-specific improvements including simplified listing creation, reservation management, and calendar integration
2. Airbnb Services
- 10 categories of professional services available in over 100 cities, including:
- Chefs, Photography, Massage, Spa treatments, Personal training, Hair, Makeup, Nails, Prepared meals, Catering
- How it works: The guest picks a service and the personal trainer, chef, etc. will come to your home at the scheduled date and time.
- Services can be booked in your own city even without staying at an Airbnb.
3. Airbnb Experiences (Relaunched)
- A key difference from the failed experiences launch in 2016 is that Airbnb is integrating experiences directly into the booking process, and can use AI along with other data to suggest the best experiences for each guest.
- Categories include: landmarks/museums, food tours/cooking classes, outdoor activities, art workshops, and fitness/wellness experiences. Available in 650 cities worldwide.
- An interesting component: Airbnb will add social features so that guests can connect with other participants before, during and after the experience.
Our Take
The app design looks great. But for hosts and property managers, the practical questions are piling up:
- Will service providers enter the property without the host’s knowledge or consent?
- Can hosts opt out of Airbnb promoting services/experiences to their guests?
- If something goes wrong (injury, damages, etc) who’s liable?
- Can a guest’s bad experience with a service/experience provider hurt the host’s reviews?
And here’s what's hard to ignore:
Based on the current information available - Hosts don’t get a cut of the revenue from services or experiences booked during the stay.
That’s a miss.
Airbnb has 5 million hosts who could promote this new ecosystem – but they need a reason to. Right now, there’s no upside – just more potential liability.
Let’s see if that changes.
