It's already so easy to do non-standard tourist activities on a vacation that I'm skeptical there is a big opportunity here. All it takes to avoid the standard tourist traps is having interests that influence your travel, talking to locals, or firing up something like Groupon to find something to do in a new area. I've always figured that so many people hit up classic tourist spots because that's what they actually want to do.

That said, I don't have any real insight into the tourism market and won't be shocked if this works out well for Airbnb. I personally try to avoid crowded tourist spots like the plague and this could just be my bias talking.

You and I seem to travel in the same way, but I know many people - even of roughly my generation, late 20s/early 30s, who literally don't know the right tools or communities to plan a trip like that. Its guidebooks, maybe some YouTube videos, and mostly things like Pinterest boards that get used to plan a trip. No trips to the local destination's subreddit, certainly no use of Google Translate to read some local media/magazines, etc.

For a lot of people, "tourist trap" doesn't register as a thing - those are just the things you _do_ when you go to whatever place you're going to.

If Airbnb becomes the safe, convenient, well-marketed way to discover reputable but not stereotypical local experiences in a marketplace that takes your credit card, they could do well IMO.

'Something like Groupon to find something to do' is the pitch though, because actual Groupon isn't the ideal place to find things which are interesting to experience on holiday. (And in many of places asking locals meets with either utter bemusement or a commission-paying introduction to a standard tourist activity)

AirBNB aren't the first people to try this, but they're pretty well placed brand-wise to sell the 'real local experience curated by ordinary local people' image. And yes, in practice it'll leverage that to sell standard tourist activities and some customers will be delighted, just like they use AirBNB to find ideally situated self-catering holiday apartments run as businesses rather than airbeds in suburban spare rooms

Yes this seems reasonable. I used to work for one of the main competitors of Airbnb and this was our strategy for growth outside of our core business of selling hotel "roomnights" until Covid hit.

The margins on flights and attraction tickets are tiny as you might expect, but the idea was this would lead to more growth in our core business since it could all be tied together in one platform. There's also the less well defined but non-zero benefit of data, marketing and so on that this extra visibility provides.

Brian has talked about getting into flights in some capacity. I wonder if dealing with bookings is not their goal but imagine if they had Airbnb louges in major airports. Those traveling with an Airbnb stay booked could access the lounge free of charge. Sort of like a loss leader to promote downstream Airbnb bookings.

>Airbnb experiences are supposed to subvert this and create an industry of tourism that is more serendipitous and less standardized.

Although the experiences I saw were either around (vegan) cooking and stuff or the general stuff that you can book at a normal tourist agency, just a lot more expensive.

Nothing too interesting, just expensive but YMMV.

It's just a marketing talk for airbnb getting into activities booking business.