Airbnb is making one of its boldest strategic moves yet: expanding beyond homes to become a lifestyle brand. With its newly relaunched Experiences and brand-new Services, Airbnb aims to offer more than just places to stay. It wants to shape how guests spend their time, both during travel and, increasingly, in their everyday lives.
But while the company paints a big-picture vision of a future where booking a dinner with locals or hiring an Airbnb-vetted dog walker is as common as reserving a home, analysts — and some vacation rental professionals — remain skeptical. Why? Because the launch may have been underwhelming, the product catalog remains limited, and questions linger about scale, traction, and control.
Here’s a breakdown of what Airbnb is betting on — and why it’s not quite landing with everyone just yet.
🧠 The Big Idea: From Travel Platform to Lifestyle Brand
At the heart of Airbnb’s strategy is a transformation:
From “a place to stay” → to “a platform for meaningful time.”
Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s CEO, sees a future where guests turn to Airbnb not just when they travel, but to discover experiences and services in their own city — things like yoga in the park, handmade pasta workshops, dog grooming, or personal styling.
To support this, Airbnb has:
- Relaunched Experiences in 2025 with a new curation strategy and integration into the core app.
- Launched Airbnb Services, offering paid, on-demand offerings like massage, childcare, or cooking — all hosted by locals and available for booking in the app.
Chesky has said these categories could become “multi-billion dollar businesses.” But today, they are far from it.
🔍 The Current Reality: Small Catalog, Big Questions
Let’s look at where these products actually stand today:
- Experiences are available in a few dozen cities and include tightly vetted listings. While better curated than before, it’s still a small supply pool.
- Services are currently live in just a handful of cities and include a limited number of offerings. In most markets, the catalog is so small that guests may not even encounter them.
Even Airbnb’s CFO, Ellie Mertz, admitted during the Q2 2025 earnings call that “seats booked” (their new metric for usage) are still immaterial to total bookings.
For many watching the launch closely, the scale is underwhelming. And for vacation rental managers, the arrival of Services — especially those that can be booked to happen at their properties — raises questions about control and oversight.
❓ 5 Key Doubts from Analysts (and What Airbnb Says in Return)
1.
Will Anyone Book This Stuff?
The Doubt: What’s the attach rate? Are people really booking services and experiences alongside their stays?
Airbnb’s Response: Not much detail on hard numbers, but Chesky points to:
- Over 13,000 press stories
- Nearly 660 million social impressions
- A strong average rating of 4.93/5 stars from guests (even higher than homes at 4.8)
He says bookings are still small, but the integration into the app and top-of-funnel awareness are laying the foundation.
2.
Can Airbnb Scale Supply Without Losing Quality?
The Doubt: The danger of any new vertical is flooding it with mediocre listings.
Airbnb’s Response: Chesky insists that:
- Every Experience is vetted before going live — more rigorously than homes.
- A network of third-party vendors and operational staff handles vetting and onboarding.
- The company is pursuing a strategy of scarcity + quality, with Airbnb Originals (its own curated experiences) setting the bar.
3.
Why Not Focus on Homes and Hotels Instead?
The Doubt: Shouldn’t Airbnb stick to what it’s good at — and not spread itself thin?
Airbnb’s Response: It’s an “and, not or” strategy:
- Airbnb is expanding its hotel supply, especially with independent B&Bs.
- But Experiences and Services offer new growth paths and a chance to diversify revenue — especially with local demand playing a key role.
For instance, 40% of Airbnb Originals bookings and 10% of Services bookings are made by locals, not travelers — a key signal that Airbnb sees lifestyle usage as the bigger long-term opportunity.
4.
Is the $200 Million Investment Too Much, Too Soon?
The Doubt: Is Airbnb overinvesting in something unproven?
Airbnb’s Response: Mertz says this isn’t new spending — just a refined estimate of already announced plans. It covers:
- Headcount
- Vetting operations
- Supply onboarding Not a big increase in marketing.
Yes, margins will dip in Q3 and Q4 2025. But Airbnb says this is part of a long-term investment in category creation.
5.
Will This Require Massive Advertising to Succeed?
The Doubt: Do Experiences and Services need expensive campaigns to gain traction?
Airbnb’s Response:
They’re bundling it all together.
Instead of separate vertical campaigns, Airbnb is marketing itself as one platform — homes, experiences, and services included.
They’re also:
- Spending less on TV, more on social-first ads
- Targeting inspiration-based travelers, especially younger audiences
- Relying on direct traffic (90% of Airbnb’s traffic is unpaid)
This makes the strategy look lean and efficient — on paper, at least.
🏡 Why This Matters to Vacation Rental Managers
If you’re a professional host or manager, there are a few reasons to care:
- Experiences could create new partnerships — especially for operators offering multi-unit stays or properties near tourism clusters.
- Services may happen at your property — but so far, Airbnb hasn’t explained how or whether VRMs will be notified, let alone approve them. That could lead to tension.
- Airbnb is trying to build stickiness with guests, even when they’re not traveling. If this strategy works, it could increase lifetime value of Airbnb users — which, in the long run, helps supply-side hosts.
But until the catalog grows and processes are clearer, many managers will watch from the sidelines.
🧭 Final Take: A Bold Vision, Still in Beta
Airbnb is planting the seeds for a very different kind of platform — one where time, not just space, is the main product.
But even Chesky and Mertz admit: they’re early in this journey. The bet is bold. The ambitions are huge. But right now, most of it is promise, not performance.
Whether Experiences and Services become real revenue drivers — or stay as niche add-ons — will depend on how well Airbnb executes in 2025 and beyond. For now, vacation rental managers should track closely, ask tough questions about Services happening at their listings, and look for local pilots that may point to bigger shifts ahead.
