What Airbnb is doing wrong with Experiences (and how they can fix it).

Airbnb’s ascent as a player in the accommodation space has been meteoric. It is trying to pivot from being a pure accommodation marketplace to being a new kind of travel agency, and with good reason. But their new(ish) product, Airbnb Experiences, has not gained the same kind of traction as their core offering.

Why?

For 3 key reasons:

1) Their curation requirements for creating an experience are strict; far stricter than their criteria for accommodation listings, hence their overall experiences inventory is far more limited.

2) Whereas they rely on guest reviews to rank accommodation listings, they rely in the first instance on their internal appraisal criterial for what constitutes a good experience. This departure from relying on user reviews feels out of synch with the platform’s ethos of trusting hosts (suppliers).

So while one can appreciate their emphasis on quality, it’s a case of the baby being thrown out with the bath water.

3) Typical user behaviour sees travellers booking experience once they’re in-country already, based on local recommendations from the establishments they’re staying in. This is a key missed opportunity for the platform.

What can Airbnb do to stimulate Experiences growth?

To grow experiences Airbnb must financially incentivise local Airbnb hosts to recommend Airbnb Experiences, even if they don’t offer experiences themselves.

Add the option to add a Referral Partner to your Experiences Hosting Dashboard, similar to the way you can add a third-party host as an Accommodation Manager, and create an affiliate hyperlink for them (e.g. Experiences/1245346/?RefererID=AndreBothma).

Enable the Experience Host to create payout rules, so I can earn a percentage of income every time my accommodation guests book an Experience using my affiliate link.

Doing so would enable Airbnb to harness the network referral effect, while also giving credibility to Airbnb Experiences based on local knowledge and pre-existing relationships of trust and shared tastes.

I already provide all my guests with detailed recommendations for specific restaurants and experiences; I might as well make some secondary income from it as well.

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