Places to Stay

Airbnb’s Redesign Makes Finding Rentals for Long-Term Stays and Multi-Stop Trips So Much Easier

The company’s CEO, Brian Chesky, talks with Condé Nast Traveler about its new interface and how it’s changing the way we think about travel.

By Rachel Chang

May 11, 2022

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Airbnb is opening up the world of travel even further with the company’s biggest update in a decade, which increases choices by 40 percent for travelers searching for stays of at least a week using a new technology called Split Stays, and also introduces inventive categories and more insurance coverage.

“We have the biggest travel rebound of the century ahead of us and I hope that when people look at our website or new app that they're reminded that there's this really big world just waiting to be discovered—a world of possibilities,” CEO Brian Chesky says. “You can live like a king in a castle and like a kid in a treehouse or you can be like an explorer on a boat. If you love design, you can sleep in a Frank Lloyd Wright home, like I did in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a month ago.”

The overhaul was launched this morning with Split Stays, which pairs two home rentals in back-to-back stays, creating an itinerary that can be built based on location or theme.

Previously, listings would only surface in search if they were available for the entirety of a stay, a particular pain point for lengthy stays of a week or more, which account for more than half of Airbnb guests' stays in the last three months. The new capability nearly doubles the search options by automatically coupling up two listings that will fulfill the search parameters together.

A look at how Split Stays brings new accommodation combos to travelers.

Courtesy Airbnb

What the team discovered while testing Split Stays was the potential to create itineraries based on themes. For example, if you’re looking for a national park-themed getaway, perhaps you can hit up two national parks-area homes back-to-back instead of one. “What makes it so revolutionary isn’t what it is today, but what it can be,” Chesky says. “It represents the ability for Airbnb to start creating custom itineraries with machine learning, artificial intelligence, plus custom curation.”

As a result, the launch also includes 56 new themed categories, which include accommodation types like A-frames, cabins, castles, earth homes, houseboats, treehouses, windmills, and yurts; activity categories like golfing, surfing, and skiing; and location types like beaches, cities, Moroccan riads, and Italian Trulli. There’s even a category for creative spaces that includes recording studios and green screen soundstages, as well homes with grand pianos. Of the 6 million listings on the platform, 4.4 million unique homes are now in a category, and some are in more than one.

The categories also offer additional, customized data. For instance, if you’re searching within the design category, each listing will have a descriptor that says who the designer is, but if it’s of national parks, then the same line will detail which park it’s close to.

Perhaps the most standout category is one of Chesky’s favorites, simply titled “OMG!” with a spaceship logo. There's no other way to describe it than that “I can't believe it exists,” he says, pointing at a zig-zag home in Costa Rica and a yellow submarine in New Zealand as examples.

According to Chesky, what Airbnb is really doing with these two features is disrupting the way travel searches have been done for the last 25 years, explaining that the idea of starting every search with a destination is outdated now that the world has opened up—especially to remote workers—with 100,000 cities represented on its site.

Both new aspects will help drive travelers outside of the previous travel boundaries—and perhaps even solve a bigger problem. “Overtourism isn't too many people in the world traveling,” he says. “It’s too many people going to the same place at the same time.” Though he’s careful not to overpromise, he does say there’s a hope that the new Airbnb will help “redistribute” travel to more locations.

Chesky also is well aware that the pandemic’s impact on most travelers is still significant, citing that many haven’t traveled much in the last two years. To provide added comfort, the final major piece of the new overhaul is AirCover, an added insurance that is automatically included in every booking without any costs to the guests.

The benefit had previously protected hosts, but now all guests will get guarantees, so that if the host cancels within 30 days or if the property has an issue and doesn’t live up to what was advertised, Airbnb will find a similar or better vacation rental or hotel option, or refund the guest. The service will be provided by a live agent, with access to AI-curated listings, with the first priority always being a better replacement home in the area. But if needed, they can also pull from HotelTonight inventory, which Airbnb acquired in 2019. Guests will also have access to a 24-hour safety line through AirCover with specially-trained agents available to contact if guests ever feel unsafe.

Though this Airbnb overhaul is a marked change, Chesky says this is just the beginning, explaining there will continue to be guest-oriented updates each May and host-focused ones every November, but that by the end of the summer, there will be an upgrade to address fee transparency, too. Beyond the major new features, smaller improvements have also been made, including a “massive” upgrade to customer service.

“The bigger a company gets, the harder it is to change exactly—I want Airbnb to be the opposite,” he says, admitting it’s “scary to change.” “The world is changing and we have to change, we have to take risks. That's what the customer deserves.”