Airbnb new features...interesting but a little underwhelming
Maybe I'm used to the Tesla way of launching new things (think Tesla Gigafactory launch event), and maybe it's hard to do that with a website focused business like Airbnb, but the recent update that was meant to be the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade (their words not mine) which was a little underwhelming to say the least. Here's the three features they released:
Airbnb Categories - positioned to better connect users stays they were unable to find previously.
Split Stays - basically giving you an ability to book multiple places in a single trip (split your trip between two homes for example)
AirCover for guests - basically a guarantee that Airbnb will find you a similar or better place to stay if the host screws up.
From an investor perspective I'm mostly interested in how new updates and features translates to user and revenue growth. The Categories are interesting, it feels more like advanced filters to me and relies heavily on hosts putting their houses in the right categories when listing. But I can see this being beneficial to users and should result in increased revenue with users able to find houses that better suit.
The Split Stays and AirCover, well I'm not really sure they just seem like iterations of what is already in place, so nothing really to get excited about.
Again, this biggest in a decade launch, feels a bit more like an attempt to get some publicity (not a bad thing though, considering the coverage it has received) rather than some ground breaking new products and services that will continue to super charge growth.
Check out the full announcement here - https://news.airbnb.com/2022-summer-release/