Airbnb making it 'more affordable to stay longer' at rentals with new features: CEO

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the new addition to Airbnb features and how it plays a role in the company's customer experience, the travel industry outlook, the regional banking crisis, and AI.

影片文字紀錄

[AUDIO LOGO]

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Airbnb is rolling out some big changes to its platform. The company is adding more than 15 new features, including transparent checkout procedures, improved maps, and the launch of Airbnb Rooms. Yahoo Finance's Brad Smith, along with myself, spoke with CEO Brian Chesky on how all of these features play a key role in Airbnb's customer experience.

BRIAN CHESKY: We are expecting 300 million guest arrivals this year. And we've been getting more feedback than ever. And we want people to have an amazing experience in Airbnb. But that-- partly that means listening to customers. And we've been getting a lot of feedback, millions of customer service tickets, social media posts, and we've been interviewing guests and hosts.

And we've been asking the question, what annoys you about Airbnb? What can we do to make the experience even better? And they gave us so many different pieces of feedback, things like we want to make sure Airbnbs are affordable. When we check out, we don't have too many chores. We want to see the price up front. We want customer service to be very responsive.

The other thing we saw is some big new opportunities. We're seeing more and more people stay longer on Airbnb. So we've made it more affordable to stay longer. We've got this really great dial to, like, be able to search from a month to a year on Airbnb.

And probably the most important thing we're announcing is Airbnb Rooms. Airbnb Rooms is an all new take on the idea that started it all. Airbnb Rooms gets us back to that founding ethos of sharing. And the-- and what it is, is it's basically just an idea that you stay in a room in someone's house, an extra guest room, while they're there. This is how we started.

But the problem is that a lot of people have been telling us lately they don't feel comfortable staying with another person. We heard this before. And so we said, well, what if we can develop a feature where you feel like you get to know the guest before you-- the host before you book?

And so we created this thing called the Host Passport. You can see and get to know the host. We verify their identity. You can learn about them. You can message them. So it's really just the idea of upgrading our profiles. And the reason someone would want to do this is the average price per night of an Airbnb room is $67 a night, and it's a great way to experience a city like a local.

AKIKO FUJITA: Brian, let me follow up on that point because, as you have highlighted, a number of your summer releases really does point to that cost savings element. I mean, to what extent are you seeing travelers, those users on Airbnb, trading down their experiences in this environment?

BRIAN CHESKY: Well, I mean, we are absolutely seeing a lot more interest in more affordable rooms in homes and Airbnb. Our average daily rate, our price per night, is pretty constant with a year ago. So I wouldn't say it's going down, but it's not going up anymore. And we think, ultimately, this is a good thing because I think affordability is a big part of Airbnb.

And we've noticed that hotels are a bit more expensive. Some studies suggest United States hotels are about 10% to 15% more expensive than a year ago. And so we're just trying to make sure that we provide a great affordability.

That's why we launched Airbnb Rooms. We now have an opportunity to allow you to pay by bank if you have a monthly stay, which allows you to cut off the credit processing fees. There's a number of things we're doing to try to make it be more affordable.

AKIKO FUJITA: We've been speaking to a number of people within the travel sector. Everything points to real demand, significant demand, even going into the summer, even as those travelers get pinched. What are you seeing when you look ahead?

BRIAN CHESKY: I think we're seeing that people are very interested in traveling, but they also want to make sure that the traveling options they have are more affordable than before. We also see a lot of people want to make international trips. A lot of people in the last three years have been isolated. They haven't felt comfortable crossing borders.

I think people are finally getting more comfortable going to a foreign country. But again, if they do that, they're going to want to probably save more money than before given inflation, other economic factors, hence, why Airbnb Rooms, we think, could be a really good option for a lot of people.

AKIKO FUJITA: Brian, looking beyond Airbnb, we always like to talk to you about just where we're seeing the macro environment. You've got a pretty good pulse on what's happening in the Bay Area. And I wonder, as you've been seeing some of these regional banks collapse, particularly Silicon Valley Bank, what do you think that's done to the confidence of startups? A lot of them were banked there. And more broadly here, what does it mean for what was already a pretty fragile ecosystem?

BRIAN CHESKY: I think that the regional banking crisis is probably, honestly, saying more about banking than Silicon Valley. I think that the regional banks disproportionately affected early-stage companies. Early-stage companies' confidence were shaken for a week or two when it wasn't clear that people were going to have availability to the deposits within SVB. I think once those were backstopped, I think that kind of became an issue that people stopped worrying about.

And so I think that it's a tale of two cities as far as tech. Really big companies and public companies, I think, have been under a lot of pressure. They don't have the multiples they used to have. They're experiencing a lot of layoffs.

I think the same, and maybe even worse, are late-stage private companies, where their valuations might be 70% lower than the last round they raised money at, and a lot of companies might be underwater. They might be worth less than the amount of money that they raised. And, of course, if an investor has liquidation preference, that's a big problem for the founders.

That being said, I think AI, in particular, has created so much excitement. And AI will allow you to be so much more productive that this feels, in another way, like the mid-90s, presumably-- of course, I was in middle school, high school back then-- or perhaps the mid-2000s during the mobile revolution, the social networking revolution, where I think people are seeing so much opportunity. So I think that whatever economic problems we have in the early stage is going to be overshadowed by the excitement of AI.

BRAD SMITH: We're hearing a lot of mentions right now about AI over the course of this earnings period. Even over the course of 2023, it seems like it's having its blockchain type of moment where companies would just say it, see their stock prices rise. But it's a question of how is this actually going to be implemented.

I mean, even Coke is talking about generative AI. You're kind of like, OK, all right, guys. Come on. But for Airbnb, a technology company, does this make any sense for integrating generative AI into any portion of the Airbnb operation or the experience for customers? Do you even think about that right now?

BRIAN CHESKY: Yeah, I mean, let's just back up.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.

BRIAN CHESKY: There's a reason there's tech buzzwords because once in a while they're real. The computer was real. The internet was real. Mobile was real. The problem is if somebody talked about the metaverse, then they talked about crypto Web3, now they're talking about AI, there's a good chance they don't know about any of them because how could you be an expert in all three?

But it turns out that AI, this time, this one's real. Now, using the buzzword is not going to change anything. It's going to change everyone's life. It's going to be like electricity. It's going to be something that we're all going to live with. It's a little hard to predict.

I don't think that it's something that is a bandwagon you jump on. It's just something that's like the weather just changed. You just live in this new world where everything's going to evolve. A little hard to predict exactly what's going to happen.

I think the meet-- the nearest-term impact it's going to have is it's going to make everyone in tech companies more productive. Software engineering will be more efficient because computer programming is a language, and now suddenly these tools can, in some ways, do development just as good as a person, in some cases better than a person. It can be great QA. It can be a co-pilot for them. And it could even, like, increase their productivity.

So I think the main thing it's going to do is to improve productivity. I think over the next couple of years, we're going to start to see really interesting applications go up. You only have a few big language models, like base models, maybe like OpenAI.

So the real question, the real economic opportunity is what can you build on top of them? What applications are now possible because of AI that weren't. So again, there's a lot of buzzwords. But once in a while, they become revolutions. And this is a revolution.

AKIKO FUJITA: That was Airbnb's CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky speaking to us earlier today. Seana, it's interesting where he is calling this, what's happening with AI, a revolution. I did ask him about how he thinks it's going to disrupt the travel industry. And he said it really is going to be centered around digital operations like Airbnb.

What does it mean for airlines? A little too hard to predict right now. But he seems to really be looking ahead to integrating some of these models into Airbnb. You could argue some of that has already been integrated, although not in the form of AI that we've been talking about over the last several months.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, exactly. And, Akiko, you and Brad were discussing it there with Brian, but it's really touching every single industry. Obviously, it could potentially really help, maybe even revolutionize, the future of travel. But exactly how they integrate it, that is going to be interesting to watch.

I was also surprised just in terms of demand. And I know we have heard it time and time again from nearly every CEO that we have spoken with over the last several weeks within the travel sector, but given the fact that we are in this higher rate environment, given the fact that we're headed for maybe a more significant slowdown, consumers continuing to spend. And they're spending at higher prices.

Hotel price is up, what, just over 30% on a year-over-year basis. Brian talking about international trips, that being a bright spot. More and more people are looking to book internationally, very similar to what we heard from United CEO in terms of where they're seeing the most traction. So despite all of these headwinds, people remain eager to travel.

AKIKO FUJITA: They are eager to travel. But worth noting some of those changes that Airbnb announced with their summer release, it is about cost savings too. He talked about Rooms. He talked about partnering with Klarna so that you don't have to pay everything at once as a total. So they are sort of meeting the market even as they look at the demand.