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TBPN · 3 min · May 8, 2026

Hotels, services and longer stays are Airbnb's next growth bets

Brian Chesky · CEO, Airbnb

Brian Chesky sees hotels, services and stays over 30 days as growth areas beyond Airbnb's core.

In this episode

Full analysis
  1. 3:26Founder mode starts by fixing one corner of the companyPro pick 3 min
  2. 7:04Travel needs a richer interface than a text chatbot2 min
  3. 18:00Consumer AI needs product thinkers, not just AI researchersPro pick 3 min
  4. 29:19Hotels, services and longer stays are Airbnb's next growth bets3 min
  5. 9:23Airbnb's operations are larger than its guest app3 min
  6. 22:54AI lets designers take on product and engineering work3 min
  7. 14:08AI could change travel discovery and flight search first2 min
“A fun thing is that about half the hotels in the world are independents and boutiques.”
Brian Cheskyat 30:22 · TBPN
30:22

Takeaways

  1. Airbnb's core bookings could one day double, Chesky says.
  2. Independent and boutique hotels make up about half the world's hotels.
  3. Services and stays over 30 days are other expansion bets.

About this segment

Brian Chesky sees hotels, services and stays over 30 days as growth areas beyond Airbnb's core. He sees independent hotels as an opportunity because many face high OTA commissions or pressure to franchise.

Brian Chesky

Brian Chesky is CEO of Airbnb.

Built Airbnb from its first hosted stays into a global community with over five million hosts.

  • John Coogan, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Co-founded Soylent and Lucy; OpenAI bought his show TBPN in April 2026.

  • Jordi Hays, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Founded Branded Native; co-founded fintech Capital, which Rho bought.

From “Airbnb CEO on Why AI Will Create a New Era of Consumer Products”, May 8, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

From the transcript TBPN publishes with the episode.

  1. 29:22

    Well said. I have one more. But Yeah. Looking out into the future, you've ridden the growth of the short term rental market. You dominate it now is is the biggest opportunity to just continue to make the best product in the category, ride the continued growth of it, or do you think there's another STR size market for Airbnb?

  2. 29:46

    I think the biggest opportunity for Airbnb is to go beyond our core business. I do think, you know, our core business does close to a $100,000,000,000 in gross sales if you net out all the other businesses, gross booking value, the total amount of reservations going through the site. I think that could probably double one day. I don't know how long that one day is, but for every person who stays in Airbnb, eight or nine stay in a hotel. I think we can get one extra person in an Airbnb eventually.

  3. 30:11

    And I think that can get you to 200,000,000,000. I think there's a market much larger than Airbnb, which is hotels. Again, hotels about eight or nine times the size of Airbnb. I don't think we'll ever be a hotel dominant site, but we are going more aggressive into hotels. A fun thing is that about half the hotels in the world are independents and boutiques. They're not chain hotels. And they're not really happy listing on the OTAs because they pay a higher commission to chains. A lot of these independent hotels are being forced or they feel like their hand is being forced to franchise to Marriott, to Hilton and other brands because they have loyalty programs. They can negotiate lower commissions. So we think we can be a distribution channel for these boutiques' independents.

  4. 30:50

    That is a multibillion dollar market. I think another one would be services. There's no Amazon for services. And, you know, think about like you can hit a button and a car can pick you up. You can hit a button and food can be delivered to you. But what about hitting a button and having 80 other things possible? You know, I don't know if any one market is large, but if you add up the 80 different service verticals, that to me is another pretty big market. And then maybe the last one is like living, stays longer than thirty days. More and more people have a job via laptop.

  5. 31:20

    More people are nomadic. More people are moving around. That's another really big market. So I think for Airbnb, we're looking at really expanding to a lot of different categories, and I think that's where most of the growth is gonna be in the future.

  6. 31:32

    Do billboards in San Francisco work on you? Going back to marketing, it's one of these old things where, like, yes, I I completely agree with you. Like the the the CMO who did the first billboard campaign back in the fifties probably printed legend, you know, books written about them.