Online accommodation portal has unveiled its new approach to experiential marketing as it expands beyond accommodation provision into services and experiences.
The San Francisco-based company revealed its new offering Trips, a user-powered travel experience platform that allows locals to showcase immersive activities in their communities.
Experiences cited by Airbnb include Samurai sword lessons in Tokyo and violin-making in Paris.
Offered by hosts, the bookings can be multi-day or just a few hours. Airbnb now has 500 experiences at more than 12 cities, including London, Paris and Tokyo.
The new offering comes as part of the brand’s newly unveiled Trips platform, which features three key areas – Experiences, Places and Homes.
The Places aspect of the platform features insider guidebooks featuring recommendations from locals on the top places to visit, with 100 available at launch in six cities – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Havana, Nairobi, Detroit and Seoul, with more expected to be included in the future. A further one million individual recommendations worldwide from Airbnb hosts are available on the platform. The company has also entered into a partnership with company Detour to offer audio walking tours for select destinations.
Meanwhile, in a move that would see Airbnb take on travel booking site Expedia, the brand plans to add flights and services options to the platform in the future.
To launch the platform, Airbnb broadcasted six ‘trips’ in six different locations simultaneously on Facebook Live, showing hosts and visitors enjoying a unique experience.