Brian Chesky tells why Airbnb left the “forget hotels” motto behind and how it is preparing for the artificial intellige
Airbnb's CEO sat down with reporters in San Francisco after announcing the platform's most ambitious launch. This was the most revealing.
Airbnb presented Summer Release 2026 this week, which it has classified as the most ambitious launch in the history of the platform. The package includes formal entry to boutique and independent hotels in 20 cities, car rentals, grocery delivery via Instacart in more than 25 US cities, luggage storage and airport transfers in more than 160 cities. Additionally, a new batch of more than 3,000 monument experiences and 2,500 gastronomic experiences, an exclusive package of activities tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in six host cities with figures such as Javier Mascherano, Rio Ferdinand, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan, and an artificial intelligence layer that already addresses 40% of customer support queries in eleven languages.
As part of the activities surrounding the keynote in San Francisco, Brian Chesky, CEO of the company, sat with a small group of journalists in a round table discussion that lasted about an hour. We were there. The conversation covered the lesson left by Paris, the archive of the founding motto “forget hotels”, the commitment to boutique and independent hotels, his reading of the ban on short rentals in New York, the twelve-month window that the company gives itself to capture the next wave of consumer artificial intelligence, the new categories that arrive in the catalog of experiences, the hotels where the CEO himself stays and his philosophy on the share price.
This was the most revealing thing he said.
What they learned from Paris
As to whether last year's rebrand, with its commitment to curated experiences and very “Airbnb” services, had worked, Chesky responded with textbook self-criticism.
"Last year's launch worked as a rebrand. We had a problem, which was that Airbnb works as a noun and a verb at the same time, and that's a double-edged sword. It means a home, so we had to get people to think that Airbnb is not just a home. That worked. But when we launched we had a hundred cities, and it turned out that they were too many to focus on," he said.
"What we ended up doing, a month or two after launching, was going back to basics: focusing on a single city for services and a single city for experiences. We doubled down on Paris. And the reason is that for the first two years of Airbnb we only focused on New York, the core business. What we learned is that there are three types of travelers: those who arrive for the first time in a city, those who return several times and the locals. And they all want different things."
"The first wants a landmark, an emblematic point. The second wants food. The third wants local culture, insider things. We decided to start with landmarks. We were a little scared because we wanted something truly local and very cool, but people told us: 'yes, but they don't have the Eiffel Tower'. So we said: let's make landmarks, but Airbnb style."
That meant, in practice, choosing guides better, limiting group size and eliminating anything that sounded like mass tourism. "No groups of twenty, no megaphones, no lanyards hanging around your neck, no cheesy. We curated the 3,000 best landmarks in the world and made sure we had good experiences at each one. Then we went for the food."
The metric that he did share is the one that best explains the success of the Parisian bet: "40% of Airbnb Originals reservations in Paris are from locals. The biggest question was if we could get the French to book experiences on an American website, if we could get Parisians to book experiences, because for years they didn't do it. We are starting to see that momentum too."
The “forget hotels” archive
For a decade, Airbnb's founding motto was the exact opposite of what the company announced this week. Asked about his favorite hotel and how his own travels had changed over the years, Chesky ended up breaking down that framework.
"I'll be honest: I didn't want to work with hotels ten years ago. Our first tagline was 'forget hotels.' a little more authentic, a little more handmade,” he said.
"I was wrong about boutique hotels. I didn't realize how cool a lot of them were in design, and how they were struggling in the market. I thought, 'Oh my God, I fell asleep at the wheel, I wasn't curious enough to see how great a lot of them are.'"
The decision to open to boutique and independent hotels, he said, comes from a market realization. "The boutique market was really underserved. The big chains prefer that you book directly on their site, so they have loyalty programs. Boutique hotels are too small for most to have heard of, and they can't have a boutique program because there aren't enough other boutiques. When word got out in the industry, they felt like they had a monopoly: in the United States it's Expedia, in Europe it's Booking. They wanted another option."
Regarding commercial terms, he highlighted that the commission that Airbnb charges boutique hotels is one of the lowest in the market and that its traveler base fits with what these properties are looking for: "We have many American and Western travelers, especially in Europe, where the majority of boutique guests are Europeans who do not spend as much or stay as long as a typical American. They like our travelers to be young, who have longer relationships with the hotels, who are more likely to upload things to networks and promote the brand."
Regarding whether they will one day open Airbnb to large chains, it was clear. "Boutiques and independents are more in line with the brand. When someone searches for Airbnb, they're looking for something that feels a little more local, more personal, more authentic. Most boutiques will never be as authentic as a real person's home, but they will typically be much more authentic than a chain hotel. Never say never, but I'm not ideologically against chains: I'm less passionate about things that feel less authentic."
The 12-month window and the Amazon of services
One of the most discussed theses of the round table was that of “Amazon of services”. As to how much of that ambition had been accelerated because artificial intelligence moved faster than anticipated, Chesky responded with a string of numbers.
"I'll give you an example. The core business took us seventeen years to build. The services and experiences took us two years. Grocery shopping, nine months. Car rentals, three months. Luggage storage and airport transfers, two months. The next categories we can do in a month, and there may be a day when we go from idea to conception in a week or two," he said.
"There are three reasons. One, it becomes a muscle. Two, each new business is less incremental: the hotel page we made reuses experience components. The third is artificial intelligence. I told my team that we have a twelve-month window."
The long thesis that supports that window deserved a separate response. "ChatGPT changed the world, but they have a problem: they haven't been able to figure out how to make money. There are three ways: advertising, but Gemini and Claude aren't doing ads, so it's difficult; subscriptions, only four or five percent of people pay for them, and why would you pay if you can use something for free; and integrations with third parties like e-commerce, which ChatGPT closed in March. What's happening is that OpenAI focused on Codex, on coding. Everyone is focused on code, on enterprise. Of the 175 companies in the latest Y Combinator cohort, on whose board I am, I believe 159 are enterprise companies.”
"No one is building consumer AI. No one's daily life has been changed that much by the consumer internet recently. In fact, I think part of the pushback against AI is that it's enterprise. Enterprise AI probably fuels fears about job automation. Consumer AI is about enriching people's lives, at least it could be. I told the team that it's a land grab and that we have twelve months to move as quickly as possible to have as many verticals as we can. We won't do everything, but we'll probably try to do everything that's related. with travel and lifestyle.”
When asked what gives Airbnb an advantage in that race, Chesky returned to a fact he repeated several times during the session: "A service is only as good as the demand for it. More people probably visit Airbnb than Netflix in different visitors. We were visited by 1.6 billion devices a year. We don't have as much traffic because you don't visit us every day, but it's billions of visitors. We already have one of the biggest assets, which is demand. The other thing is that many of the companies we partner with “They want to expand internationally, and we already have an international audience.”
Why Airbnb prefers to partner before buying
When asked about the strategy regarding the purchase of companies by Expedia and how Airbnb decides between building, partnering, buying or investing, Chesky deployed a clear internal framework.
"We have dozens and dozens of ideas and things we want to launch, and for each one we think, should we build it? If it's more about memories and meaning, we'll probably build it, because it's going to involve hosts. If it's about convenience, very logistical, very operational, like delivering groceries to homes, where Instacart does very well, we'll probably partner. Acquisition is the third category, and we haven't done much in a long time. We're open. Nothing to announce," he said.
"My bias is to start by building or partnering, and then acquire or invest. Partnering is like dating before getting married. It works. It doesn't mean today's partnerships lead to an acquisition, but that's how we think about it."
Regarding Uber, he ruled out the idea of a head-on collision: "The services we announce today do not compete with them. Uber can rent cars, but it is a different audience and use. I see them more as allies than competitors. Uber would be a great partner for Airbnb."
Why Chesky cites Klein and Thompson when discussing prohibition in New York
Regarding what was the biggest obstacle for the company's core business, Chesky took the opportunity to respond to the regulatory front that bothers him the most.
"The biggest obstacle to our core business is the housing crisis, which I don't think we created. I think the housing crisis is a global crisis. It started in the '70s in the United States. I loved the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson; I had a conversation with Thompson about it. We just don't build enough housing. It's true in cities all over the world," he said.
"Why do people think Airbnb is causing such a big problem? We did surveys. In every city there is a perception that around 20% of housing is on Airbnb. In most cities the maximum is 1 or 2%. The number of urban second homes in most cities exceeds the number of Airbnbs, and that's assuming they're all taken off the market, which presumably most aren't."
"In New York, they blamed us for being the reason it was so expensive to live. I never wanted this experiment to happen, but it did: they banned Airbnb. What happened to housing prices? They rose 8% in the last two years. They accelerated after the ban. I don't know if it's correlation or causation, and hotel prices went up even more. Are we sometimes part of the problem? Sometimes. I think it's overestimated if you think we're part of the problem."
He did not fail to admit that there is something true in complexity. "There's also a lack of recognition that some people want housing prices to go up: landlords. It's a more complex problem. I think our story deserves to be told. That's why I started putting a face to who our hosts are and I'm going to do a lot more about it."
A note that deserves to be in the record: Chesky revealed, almost in passing, a statistic that had not been publicly disclosed. "I found it pretty funny when we found out that 4% of our hosts are public officials. Many of these cities that ban us, like New York, have people from their own office hosting."
The stars that are coming and the commitment to the creators
The World Cup experience package is the most visible face of the new offer. The round table shed light on a topic that was not in the official materials: the open conversation with global artists to add to the catalog of experiences and the systematic commitment to content creators. Regarding the possibility of adding figures at the level of Sabrina Carpenter, who already collaborated with the platform last year, and about the specific interest in Latin stars, Chesky did not avoid.
"Yes and yes. There are definitely more on the way and we are in talks with some of the biggest Latin stars in the world to offer experiences on Airbnb. Several of them also use Airbnb. I'm going to let them tell the world themselves instead of me. But some of the biggest people in the world who have done Super Bowl halftime shows and other things use Airbnb, they are big fans," he said.
"If I had more time in the keynote, or if it were three or four months from now, there would have been a fourth section after landmarks, food and events: creators. We are adding hundreds and hundreds of creators to the platform. What we have heard from creators is that they want supplemental income. The economy with brands is not what it was, there is fatigue, there is a lot of competition. And there is a limit: you can only post to a certain point before it feels too commercial."
What interests him most, he said, is the human dimension of the phenomenon. "The other thing we've heard, even more strongly, is that creators want to know the people who follow them. You want to know who likes your content, who comments. Many of those people want to enter your world. The conversion rate of creators is much higher than that of non-creators on Airbnb, which makes sense: if you have heard of them, you are more likely to book. And creators are great marketers, they know how to sell themselves, they create very good listings. Another thing we see is that they generate local demand: “most experiences attract travelers, but if you're a fan, you book in your own city. Creators are a gateway to local demand for experiences.”
The theory of why traveling lengthens life
The most personal conversation at the table came when he was asked how his travels had changed since childhood. The response was an entire chronicle.
"Traveling changed my life. The first time I got on a plane I was 7 years old, in 1987 or 1988, we went to St. Louis and I thought it was Paris. I was obsessed with design since I was 7, I wanted to redesign St. Louis. I went to Busch Stadium, I saw the Gateway Arch. My mom was a social worker and every year she was invited to a national conference. They paid for her flight and hotel, so we basically crashed her vacation. One year we went to St. Louis, another to New Orleans, another to Dallas, another to Seattle, another to Chicago. That's how I got to know all those cities for the first time,” he said.
"And I noticed something: I don't just remember every city I went to, I remember the days. And I realized that I don't remember every day I took the school bus. Someone once told me that traveling makes my life seem longer. Any routine is compressed. If you do something a thousand times, you don't remember the thousand; it gets compressed into a representative inventory. But each trip is different. If you want your life to feel longer, travel to more places. It's a very good way to live“.
As for how he travels today, he said he has experimented with the entire price range. "I don't always go for extreme luxury. Sometimes I use great guest favorites, I don't need a seven-bedroom villa. I'm going to Mexico City soon, I can't wait. I think it's one of the coolest cities in the world. I like to try different experiences, be part of the community."
He closed with a quote from mythologist Joseph Campbell: “The cave you fear to enter is where the treasure you seek is.” He added: "That applies to travel too. Anything that takes you a little bit out of your comfort zone offers you growth. That's what we're trying to do."
The share price and the philosophy of Bill Walsh
A question we asked about opening the IPO to hosts led Chesky to one of the most revealing passages about how management thinks.
"Our community owning the business is very important to me. I would love to do it even more. We have a lot of hosts here, a couple of hours ago I had 30 or 40 hosts in this room and about 600 on the screen. I don't know how many of them have shares, but I know that each one of them, what happens in their lives, is important. Airbnb is one of those 'by the people, for the people' brands. It's very community-based. In investor terminology they talk about institutional versus retail. I would like to that Airbnb was the kind of company where there is a large base of individual investors and ordinary people who own the stock,” he said.
Regarding the price itself, the contrast was notable. "Is the stock price important to me? You can judge me by my actions. I don't know what the stock is at. I couldn't tell you what happened today. I couldn't guess the price. Do I care? Yes. But I also have a philosophy of not spending a lot of energy on things I can't control. I can't control the stock price, but I can control the performance of the company. That's what I'm obsessed with."
"There's a very popular book in Silicon Valley circles about Bill Walsh, the coach of the San Francisco 49ers. It's called The Score Takes Care of Itself. He won several championships with Joe Montana, and yet he said he never focused on the scoreboard. The scoreboard is like a good stock price. I focus on running the company perfectly, and if I do that, the scoreboard takes care of itself. If I had a book, maybe it would be called The Stock Price Takes Care of Itself."
Affordability in times of inflation
Regarding the affordability of the new services at a time of inflation and lower discretionary income for many American travelers, Chesky responded with a market argument and another of corporate philosophy.
"We launched those four services because guests asked for them, and I think the prices are going to be very, very good, because we are essentially giving Airbnb credit on top of what is already an affordable option. We are going to be as affordable as any alternative on the internet. With hotels, rooms are usually more expensive than houses, but we are working to have many affordable hotels. The price match guarantee plus 15% Airbnb credit is a pretty competitive proposition," he said.
"We're also focused on pricing tools for hosts. One thing we've noticed is that if hosts charge less, within reason, they have higher occupancy and generally make more money. It's not intuitive for everyone. We try to create tools that show them that the way to earn more is not to maximize revenue per night, it's to get more nights and to lower the price. Affordability is critical and will continue to be critical for Airbnb. They will no longer see a separate cleaning fee on Airbnb if they are guests: all prices “Affordability is in our DNA.”
He acknowledged the concern about the context. "I am very concerned about general inflation, about the cost of everything. Also about people's fear about their job security, probably because of artificial intelligence and for other reasons. We cannot be a solution to all concerns, but we can be part of the solution. Hosting can be an outlet for people to generate extra income. 56% of our hosts are women, for example. You have a lot of economic power distributed among many demographic segments, which is very compelling."
Regarding plans to help new hosts beyond the artificial intelligence assistant, Chesky displayed the menu of offline services that Airbnb is beginning to pilot: property photography, interior design, maintenance, help registering with cities, co-hosting marketplace, a marketplace to match hosts with people who help them operate.
"The more casual hosts we have, the more they are normal people with a full-time job, the more help they are going to need. A nurse needs a lot more help than a property management company. Yes, we are going to offer more services. We hope that in the next year you will see some."
What remains to be seen
The round table left two open questions that should be followed up. The first is whether the bet on boutique hotels accelerates or displaces the core homestay business, in a year in which first-quarter revenue grew 18% year-over-year to $2.68 billion. The second is whether the twelve months Chesky is giving himself to capture the next wave of consumer artificial intelligence will be enough to anchor Airbnb as the default travel app, before any generalist agent can solve the traveler's question on its own.
For now, the May 20 announcements are already live in select markets. Car rental, the new home page, the shared itinerary and voice artificial intelligence functions will arrive throughout the summer. World Cup Experiences opened reservations that same day at 1:00 PM EDT.