Last year, Airbnb expanded its scope beyond home rental services to provide users with a one-stop shop experience for booking your complete travel experience. This feature called ‘Airbnb Trips‘ allows you to build a complete itinerary for your next travel destination.
Until date, the primary ‘Experiences’ add-on of this feature was accessible only on their mobile application. But, Airbnb is making the said capabilities available to you across both desktop and mobile web platforms starting today. While we’re now seeing a shift towards mobile platforms, the home rental startup is making it easier for everyone to access experiences — even on the desktop.
The extension of the Experiences feature is expected to increase its footfall (ahh..I mean page views!), which is extremely necessary to push the same to the frontlines. This means that your dad will now also be able to get at par with the millennial generation and book a trip complete with local events, tours, and other activities for your next trip.
The development comes on the heels of Airbnb’s increased focus on extending experiences across worldwide, one country at a time. It started off with about 500 experiences across 12 cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence, Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo, and Seoul. But, the number has since swelled to over 70 cities and 800 experiences, with recent launches in Singapore, Delhi, and China — with a new local name Aibiying.
Post its massive $1 billion capital infusion at about $31 billion valuation, Airbnb is presently doubling down on its efforts to extend the ‘Experiences’ feature across the Southeast Asian region. So, if you’re planning to take a trip to Delhi, you’ll currently have the option to choose from 15 experiences.
These include ‘Coffee Culture,’ which will provide you detailed information on the culture of drinking coffee in India. This ₹2,125 per person experience will be hosted by Krittivas and last two hours. Also, you can choose a jazz session, where a jazz-classical duo Shadow and Light (Anindo Bose and Pavitra Chari) will host a 3-hour session of songwriting and music production at ₹2,975 for three hours.
Further, Airbnb boasts that 91 percent of its experiences, curated by local hosts, have a five-star rating on the platform. It also says that Paris, Los Angeles, and Tokyo are its biggest destination for booking an Experience. Los Angeles is also one of the hottest destinations for most new experience submissions, in addition to London and San Francisco.
