The heatwaves that have swept over southern and central Europe in recent summers have led many travelers to consider an adventure trip further to the north, specifically to the Nordic countries — including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Faroe Islands. While climate change has wreaked havoc on forecasts, there’s a reasonable expectation that summer in Oslo or Stockholm should be a bit more temperate than in Rome or Athens. Here’s a look at five Nordic adventures to consider this summer.
Airbnb’s Chesky Talks Icons, Loyalty, and His Billion-Dollar Payday
01.05.2024 - 21:47 / skift.com / Brian Chesky / Sarah Kopit
Airbnb’s Brian Chesky has entered his next innovation era. He sat down with Skift this week at a product event in Los Angeles for a wide ranging interview on AI, loyalty programs, Airbnb for corporate travelers and his billion-dollar pay package. We also talked about the company’s launch of almost a dozen immersive, experience-based homes that they’re calling ‘Icons.’
The Icons build off the overwhelming success of the Barbie house last year – which Chesky notes got hundreds of millions of impressions on social media and over twice as much attention as the company’s blockbuster IPO.
These houses won’t be a classic revenue generator for Airbnb. They’ll either be free or low cost to guests – and are meant to act as an alternative to advertising.
More importantly, Chesky calls them a “gateway” into the experiences category, something Airbnb has been trying to break into for some time. He stressed Icons isn’t a traditional business, but “more like a really cool thing we’re doing, but it’s a stepping stone to where we’re taking Airbnb.”
Chesky also opened up about overpromising to Skift last year on the timing of Airbnb’s AI revolution. The possibility of a paid Airbnb loyalty program with an Amazon Prime-like membership structure. The tension between Guest Favorites vs. Super Hosts. And what he is doing with his potential multi-billion dollar pay package.
A partial transcript of the interview is below. It has been edited for clarity.
Kopit: You said last May that in a year’s time we would see a whole new Airbnb – and AI would be at the center of it. ‘Icons’ obviously isn’t AI driven. It’s almost completely the opposite. It’s very front-of-house. So have you changed your thinking there?
Chesky: No, no. We’re going pretty deep on AI. I think we made a really important acquisition with GamePlanner. We have the founder of [Apple’s] Siri on the team. We’re bringing on board great talent.
The basic idea is, eventually, we think the app is going to feel more and more like a concierge, that’s going to get to know you, learn about you. We’re starting with customer service. I think that’s the best place to start. So we’re working on AI-powered customer service that will augment the agents or take some tickets off their hands. So it’s going well but yeah, we’re not ready for a new app.
[Chesky starts looking through his phone] Is there a single app in the world that has been transformed by AI, like, generatively? No, there’s not. There hasn’t been one yet.
So it’s all taken a while. I mean, basically, the way I think about it is you have the models and a lot of vision models, but the application layer, like let’s just take our phone: Go through the apps and point to the ones that are totally affected by
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