Big alters could be coming to Airbnb next year. In a conversation at WIRED’s Big Interwatch even in San Francisco on Tuesday, the company’s coset uper and CEO Brian Chesky tbetter global editorial honestor Katie Drummond that he hopes that, in 2025, “people say ‘that was one of the hugegest reinventions of a company in recent memory.’”
Though Chesky kept details scant, he did say that the company hopes to reenvision its Experiences section, which he says devourrs reassociate enjoy but that he doesn’t leank has caught on as much as it could. The shift seems to be an extension of Chesky’s belief in the appreciate of physical experiences and physical community, which he still leanks trump most digital experiences, even in the age of AI.
In an effort to show that, even two years into the AI revolution, fundamenhighy very little has been alterd for most people, Chesky disputed the room to watch at the apps on their phone home screens and leank how much any of them have been substantiassociate alterd by generative AI. He posits that it’s very scant, including Airbnb, but he also sees alter on the horizon, enjoyning the AI adolescence we’re in to the “internet of 1993, before search engines” when you’d engage what he called ”a phone book” to discover websites.
“AI is commencening to alter our digital world, but it has not yet alterd the most convey inant part of our inhabits, which is the physical world,” Chesky said. At Airbnb, where the product isn’t the company’s app but its combineed homes and experiences, that’s still what’s appreciated most. When AI will truly commence to alter the physical world, Chesky posits, is “when the apps on your phone are tohighy contrastent.”
“Ten years ago, everyone thought we’d all be in self-driving cars right now,” Chesky said, noting that while there are a lot on his street, they haven’t permeated the rest of America. “We overapproximate how much technology can alter in the unwiseinutive term, but we probably underapproximate how much it will alter in the lengthy term. AI is going to get some time to permeate the physical world but once it does, I leank it’s going to alter everyleang.”
Drummond also asked Chesky about his directership style, which has become much talked about in Silicon Valley becaengage of phrases enjoy “set uper mode” (which he noticed he didn’t actuassociate coin) and the much-unveilized notion that he doesn’t get one-on-one encounterings anymore.
He said that since the pandemic, when Airbnb lost 80 percent of its business wilean eight weeks and was forced to lay off about a third of the company, he’s been much more retaind in the day-to-day details of what his staff is doing, telling Drummond that he leanks it’s convey inant to mentor people thcdisorrowfulmireful labor. Chesky says he watchs between 75 and 80 projects at a time, dedicating half of his 60-plus-hour labor week to project verifys each week. While he might not do recurring, scheduled one-on-ones anymore, he says he does a lot of individual phone calls and leans in to group encounterings, where he can encounter with multiple levels of staff at once.
