Airbnb CEO Interview: How AI Will Radically Change Its Service

25.08.2023 - 13:39 / skift.com / Brian Chesky / Rafat Ali / Sam Altman / Airbnb Ceo

Airbnb is at the cusp of the revolution happening in artificial intelligence, not only because its roots are in the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, but also since there is a close connection between CEO and Co-founder Brian Chesky and OpenAI Founder and CEO Sam Altman.

(Read details below in the interview).

But, it hasn’t announced or launched anything yet, even as it has announced a slew of new product enhancements and launches at its annual May product update event yesterday. The official announcement for the public is today. I met Chesky yesterday at its launch event and talked to him separately about his views on what role AI will play in the next year and beyond for the company.

In this interview, Chesky discusses the company’s renewed focus on design, creativity, and people. He explains how Airbnb lost sight of these core values and how the pandemic forced the company to rebuild from the ground up.

Chesky also discusses Airbnb’s plans to incorporate AI into the app and make it the center of how the app runs, with some launches coming later this year but major changes coming by mid next year, with a focus on personalized recommendations and improved customer service.

Additionally, Chesky mentions upcoming updates to the Airbnb platform, including paid products and services for hosts and guests, and a potential ad product that he wants to do differently.

Finally, Chesky talks about Airbnb Experiences and how the company has had fits and starts with it, but believes the market is there and someone could build a billion-dollar company just with experiences.

The full interview, below, edited for clarity:

Rafat Ali: The launch of Airbnb Rooms and this emphasis on customer service journey and the new improvements that you went through, this could have been done five years ago. Why now?

Brian Chesky, CEO and Co-Founder, Airbnb: I think it’s a big question, the biggest answer I can give you is if I think back about the two most fundamental core values about the company when we started. I think the first one was probably design and creativity. How many tech companies have two designers, one engineer? It’s unheard of.

And the other one was, as you know, the founding story, it wasn’t about empty homes, it was about people staying with each other. And I feel like that in 2008 until maybe 2011, that was very, very potent. And over the course of maybe the course of five to 10 years as you were covering us, I think those things got a little watered down, those two values got watered down. I think the value of design and creativity got watered down.

For example, by the time the pandemic had occurred, we were spending a billion dollars performance marketing, we were doing endless A/B experimentation, which a little