Brian Chesky on Skift Take Sessions
Airbnb: Services, Hotels, and Why Chesky Thinks AI Will Rewrite Travel Search
The candid admission that Airbnb is growing too slowly, paired with explicit teens and eventual 20% growth ambitions, is the clearest reason to listen. The services, hotels, and AI-interface discussion is solid but substantially repeats Chesky’s other appearances.
I mean, it's a great question. Listen, I'm not happy about where the growth rate is at the company. I think Airbnb should be growing significantly faster. It should at least be growing in the teens. And I aspire to run the kind of company that be growing at more than 20% one day. To be able to do that, we need to layer on many businesses. We need to essentially accelerate our core business. Then we need to be layering on other businesses. And that is essentially the growth algorithm that we will have to get to a compounding, you know, eventually significantly higher growth rate. I believe we're going to accelerate growth next year. I firmly believe that we're not putting out any guidance. I don't want to over promise what we're going to do.
Brian Chesky participates extensively in the headline interview, discussing Airbnb's services and hotel expansion, slowing growth, and the company's plans for AI-powered search. He predicts that AI will transform existing applications into richer, more conversational products while arguing that companies should act before AGI arrives.