Exclusive: Airbnb’s next chapter as an all-encompassing lifestyle app

Seventeen years ago, Airbnb changed the way that people travel. More than two billion guests later, the brand is synonymous with a place to stay, but now the company wants you to think of it as an enriching lifestyle. Introducing Airbnb Services, alongside a revamped Airbnb Experiences, and an all-new Airbnb app.

With the addition of 'Services', you can now have everything you would normally book, from a hotel to a blow-out to a massage, with a few clicks of a button. Need a private chef for tonight? Services can help. Travelling for work and want to keep in shape? Schedule a PT session right on the app.

Experiences, which currently allows locals to share their skills, has also been levelled up. Fancy a trip to the City of Lights? Don’t just settle for a ho-hum tour of Notre Dame – get a personalised tour by Axelle Ponsonnet, an architect who helped restore the landmark. Visiting Rome? Don’t merely look at art, but help restore a painting with the duo who took care of three Caravaggios. The list goes on, across more than 650 cities around the world, including wrestling with a Lucha Libre in Mexico City and making ramen in Tokyo with Michelin-recognised master Saburo Ishigōka – and this new app can deliver experiences and services in the same time it takes to call an Uber.

In 2024, the company launched ICONS and gave away 4,000 stays in iconic locations, such as Prince’s home in Minneapolis and movies sets including the ‘Up’ house. But in 2025, it is taking that exclusive access to another level – think getting glam with Sabrina Carpenter or delving into anime with Megan Thee Stallion.

Find out more in our exclusive interview with San Francisco-based Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, who took us through the design of the new app. Chesky holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and this foundation has profoundly influenced Airbnb’s user-centric approach.

Wallpaper*: Why did you feel this was the right time for Airbnb to launch a service app?

Brian Chesky: I’ve always thought Airbnb could become more than just a place to stay, but we had to be ready. We had this idea 17 years ago and it grew beyond our wildest imagination. But if you go back to that very first weekend when we started Airbnb, we had three people stay with us, they came as strangers but left as friends. I think it was always about more than a functional place to stay. It’s about connection, it’s about people having an authentic travel experience anywhere in the world.

We were thinking for a long time, the biggest asset in people's lives is not their home, it's not the car, it’s their time. So, what if you could Airbnb people’s passions, their skills, and those parts of their lives could be shared with other people?

W*: How did you go about this process of creating a real connection with travellers in each city?

BC: We did a lot of research on our guests and we wanted to provide them with all the same services [of] a hotel but in a much more authentic, local, special way. So, we rebuild the product from the ground up. With services, we are starting with ten categories, from chefs to masseuses and hair stylists – just Airbnb this whole world of offerings and do it very simply in an app. We put everything in one place with tabs for homes, experiences and services.

You do not need to be travelling to use these services, you can use them in your own city. Some of the categories are photography, prepared meals, make-up, and personal trainers – such as a record-holding power lifter [in LA]; this is for people who want to become really great athletes. Others have their own local gyms, have trained celebrities, and you can get a session with them starting at just $75 an hour. In Austin, you can book a private chef or a James Beard award winner who will bring you a taco bar starting at $45. It’s easier to book than an Uber.

W*: Explain how ‘services’ are different than ‘experiences’ – what’s new about the experiences?

CB: This is different to the 2016 [experiences] launch – we are completely reimagining experiences. We had some big learnings from the last time. They needed to be more affordable, more unique to Airbnb and they needed to be merchandised correctly.

Experiences is the best way to explore a city with the locals who know it best. We really just wanted to find the most interesting people in the whole world. Airbnb Originals is the future of that product. In the top carousel for ‘originals’ [formerly ICONS] we have Megan Thee Stallion doing a cool promotional experience where she designed an environment [transform into your anime alter-ego with in her ‘Otaku Hottie Quest’]; we also have Sabrina Carpenter [step inside the ‘Short n’ Sweet’ set with Sabrina Carpenter for a day of glam, dancing, and espresso], and really well-known people. One of the reasons celebrities want to do this is because they want to develop a deep connection with their fans and show a more authentic side of themselves.

It's not all celebrities. If you want an experience in Paris at The French Bastards Bakery, you can learn to bake and create your own pastry. You can also see the other guests on the experience [in the app] and you can message them, share photos, and stay in touch after.

People are looking for things in social media that are real. But you know what’s real? The real world. In this world of social media and digital acceleration with AI, sometimes you want to ride a trend, but sometimes you want the opposite. In a world where we are spending more time on our devices, we want you to get off your devices and live in the real world.

W*: Will this simplify the travel experience for hosts as well as the guests?

CB: Now, there are tools for services and experiences [that] make it easy for hosts to adjust every aspect of their listing. We have rebuilt the app for the hosts, which is just as well designed as the guest app, [and it's] easy to create a service. There is a new ‘today’ tab. This is essentially where all your reservations are. We have a brand-new day calendar that we built to schedule people by the day or hour. Go to the ‘explore’ tab for service – it’s totally integrated. Itineraries show the door code to get into the Airbnb and also recommends experiences to do in that city. We designed a new profile with over 200 million verified identities, including an ID card. It’s becoming more of a social network in the real world.

W*: Explain the process for curating the best artists, restaurants, and activities for each city.

CB: We’ve spent years evaluating what makes a good-quality, unique and authentic experience in each city. We did this in over 100 cities across 30 countries. We had to build a community of tastemakers and then we worked with them to recruit tens of thousands of some of the most interesting people in the world. We had to find the best chefs, trainers, masseuses; to do walking tours, we recruited architects. For every service and experience, everyone is handpicked for quality and expertise, and is vetted for licences and certifications.

A lot of the secret sauce of Airbnb is not just the app we are building but the community we are building of hosts and guests and how they all come together. I think after we announce this, we will get 100,000 applications for people to be service and experiences hosts. We are prepared. We help to merchandise everyone, take photos, get them on the platform, make sure they're priced correctly and make sure they're ready. Everything that we are offering you probably couldn’t even find on the internet.

W*: How did your design background play a role in creating the new app?

CB: We are moving away from a flat design. The interface is more animated, dimensional, vibrant and colourful, with icons that brings the world of Airbnb to life. It’s clean and you can see some of the craft that we put into it. We have one of the best software design teams in the world and I’m really proud of the work they have been doing.

You can see the value through and through. We obsessed over making something delightful and simple. Design is not just how it looks but how it works. It’s really intelligent. We designed a really cool identity card that works with different layers of translucency so that it reacts to movement when you turn the phone. It all comes together in this one app – it’s like many apps in one.

W*: What was your favourite part of this process?

CB: I think of myself as more of a designer than I do a tech founder or CEO, because I approach problems like a designer. My job is being a CEO, but my spirit and my heart – the way I approach a problem is the way a designer would.

My favourite part of the process was that I basically sat with these teams who were developing these products every single day, poring over these problems. How do we find these people all over the world? And make sure everyone has credibility? And how do we make it as easy to book a chef as an Uber? How do you build tools to make it really easy for the host? How do we design an itinerary that brings everything together?

Every day there was a new design problem that I had to solve, but at the end of the day [I felt] like we had a breakthrough. Only to wake up the next day with another one. I think much of design is just continually solving problems, finding a way through this maze where you end up with this product that looks so simple, so inevitable, that somebody opens the phone, they use your app, and they almost feel like this seems obvious. No one thinks there are all these problems being solved, because it seems like it was always meant to be this way.

W*: Tell us how this will change the travel industry or landscape?

CB: Well, 17 years ago, we changed the way people travel, and we are going to change it again and allow people to start this whole new world that they didn't really know existed. Now we make it incredibly easy with the tap of a button for you to get almost anything you can imagine.

These ten categories of services, and the categories of experiences, are just the beginning, because we're going to be offering more categories of service, experiences in more cities all over the world. I eventually want to be able to Airbnb almost anything you can dream of. Use [the app] when you travel or also in your own city. And I think this could make the world more exciting, more delightful. It's an alternative to the way people live today and it can make [life] richer. I think millions of people can become hosts and can share their passions and their time with other people around the world. And I think this is nothing short of a reinvention of Airbnb. Now Airbnb means so much more than a home; you can Airbnb the whole world.

Note: During the recent Los Angeles fires, Airbnb provided free housing to 23,000 displaced people and is continuing to support by giving $16 million to Habitat LA and $1 million to local non-profits to help rebuild.