Dive Brief:
- Airbnb is going to become an “AI-first application” over the next few years, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said on a Q2 2025 earnings call last week.
- The company rolled out an AI customer service agent to half of customers in the U.S. in April with initial success. It expanded its AI customer service agent domestically during the quarter, reducing the percentage of guests who need to contact a human agent by 15%, Chesky said.
- Airbnb’s AI ambitions don’t stop there, however. The company plans to bring AI into travel search next year. “I think you can't do travel planning without AI going forward,” Chesky said.
Dive Insight:
Airbnb joins a series of tech-forward companies, from Duolingo to Pinterest, looking to become a leader in AI, as Chesky stressed the importance of getting out ahead of other travel companies with the technology.
“Over the next couple of years, I think what you're going to see is Airbnb becoming an AI-first application,” Chesky said. “And I think at Airbnb, we are going through that process right now of transitioning from a pre-generative AI app to an AI native app. We're starting with customer service. We're bringing [it] into travel planning. So it's really setting the stage.”
Airbnb topped its expectations for the quarter. Revenue hit $3.1 billion, an increase of 13% year over year, and the company expects year-over-year growth of 8% to 10% for the third quarter, according to a letter to shareholders.
An uptake in travel and executing on Airbnb's core strategic priorities, including launching and scaling new offerings like its AI agent, contributed to the results, Chesky said.
Many companies are focusing on the lower stakes of travel — inspiration and travel planning, Chesky said. But Airbnb began with what he calls the hardest problem, customer service.
“Customer service is the hardest problem because the stakes are high, you need to answer this quickly and the risk of hallucination is very, very high, and you cannot have a high hallucination rate,” he said. “And when people are locked out, they want to cancel a reservation, they need help, you need to be accurate.”
Airbnb built a customer agent built on 13 models, based on data from tens of thousands of conversations, he said. Next year, the company plans on bringing the AI agent to more languages and making it more personalized and more agentic.
“So what this means is that when you reach out to an agent, the AI agent, it will not only tell you how to cancel your reservation, it will know which reservation you want to cancel, it [will] cancel it for you, and it can be agentic as in it can start to search and help you plan and book your next trip,” he said.
The company is also considering launching a loyalty membership program, Chesky said. The majority of bookings already come from repeat bookers.
“That being said, I do think we're sometimes at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis [online travel agencies] and hotels because they have a lot of programs we don't,” Chesky said. “If we were to do something, I don't think it would be a traditional points program. I think it would be something much more interesting and novel. But I absolutely think you should see something from us in the future, not imminently, but in the future.”
