reinvention of Airbnb
AirBnB provides an amazing service, the ability to painlessly book hotels that feel like houses.
I guarantee you they are not going to be the next Apple or Microsoft, they're instead just going to dilute the value of their core business chasing things that aren't going to work, instead of focusing on their core service, and then in so many years time they will become irrelevant rather than inevitable.
Airbnb is still a great option if the location is under served by normal hotels, or if you are traveling with families so you want to have a kitchen/amenities. But otherwise I almost exclusively book hotels now.
They chose to stick experiences and services as a root choice in the mobile app, not something that is attached to a booking or stay you already have. While I expect the major use case to be using these new services during a stay, the app design shows they are paving a future where you take some of what you loved about your airbnb stay back home with you.
Paypals revenues have been growing for ever. They basically do just one thing. But since the market in that one thing has a limit. The market can only price in a certain amount so the stock never grows.
So they look for growth else where
> It is also revitalizing an unsuccessful experiment the company began in 2016: offering bespoke local activities, or what it calls “experiences.” The next stage, launch date unspecified, involves making your profile on Airbnb so robust that it’s “almost like a passport,” as Chesky puts it
> After that comes a deep immersion into AI: Inspired by his relationship with Altman, Chesky hopes to build the ultimate agent, a super-concierge who starts off handling customer service and eventually knows you well enough to plan your travel and maybe the rest of your life.
That kind of makes sense to me - Airbnb must have learned to deal with trust/safety/reputation issues better than basically any other consumer app based company (except maybe Uber/Lyft)
Looking at incumbents:
Tour booking - TripAdvisor and Viator, not enough network effect
Home services - Angie's List and Thumbtack, not enough network effect
Events and concerts - Ticketmaster, enough said
Classified ads - Facebook Marketplace, enough said
Gym and fitness - Classpass, which I think is pretty good actually, but definitely going to be acquired or copied by Big Tech
Volunteer event hosting - Meetup, anyone under 40 even remember that?
thomasjudge•2h ago