Airbnb Wants to Woo Hotel Customers With Luxury Offerings

Airbnb is reportedly planning luxury offerings like personal chefs to entice travelers away from hotels.

The company wants to move beyond accommodations and experiences to “services that will make it better for guests to stay in Airbnbs,” Chief Business Officer Dave Stephenson said in an interview with Bloomberg News Wednesday (July 31).

Those services include the aforementioned chef option, mid-week cleaning and an easier time checking in, along with spa services and refrigerator stocking.

Stephenson, whose wife received a massage treatment while staying at an Airbnb property in Paris, said the company is exploring new offerings with these questions in mind: What makes guests want to stay in a hotel and not an Airbnb? How can the company make its marketplace more seamless for guests and hosts?

The executive added that a formal, more detailed announcement about these plans could come “early next year.”

His interview with Bloomberg took place on the sidelines of the Paris Olympics, an event that, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, has led Airbnb to increase its supply of vacation rentals in the French capital by 40%.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that financially secure consumers — those who do not live paycheck to paycheck — tend to spend more on travel. Of that group, 40% say their spending on airfare has been “indulgent,” a larger share than said the same of any other type of purchase.

Meanwhile, PYMNTS explored the upper echelons of luxury travel last month in an interview with Eric Grosse, CEO of subscription-based travel firm Inspirato. The company is pushing a digital “country club” type of model for its members, more than half of whom make more than $500,000 per year.

The company offers what it calls “custom travel experiences,” handling all trip planning, asking customers their favorite essentials and making sure the refrigerator is stocked when they arrive, with on-the-ground concierge service for its guests.

“Our members are very affluent, but you still have to be innovative,” Grosse told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “You have to be customer obsessed. You have to understand what it is that members are looking for, because whether that’s economic trends or other factors, it’s fair to say that in all segments of the travel industry, there’s always an evolution of customer taste.”