Airbnb has announced three important innovations for its peer-to-peer home rental booking platform that are expected to transform for the better where and how people travel. Reporting by Jenny Southan
Airbnb says he revealed his “biggest change in a decade”. So what’s up? Until now, users had to enter a destination and dates to search for properties, which relied on them having in mind a specific place they wanted to go. Inevitably, most people only think of going to the obvious destinations for a vacation (leading to overtourism), which means lesser-known places continue to be overlooked.
Now all that changes. While consumers can still search by location, Airbnb’s new homepage will bring a new “Categories” section for travel and accommodation to the forefront.
This will encourage people to think about the type of accommodation they want (e.g. Creative Spaces, Farmhouses, Off the Grid, Treehouse, Luxury, Incredible Views, Historic Homes, or Design), as well as the type of location that interests them. to them (for example, Arctic, Beach, Countryside, Desert, Lake, National Park or Vineyard).
Airbnb has noted that interest in this type of accommodation is growing. Wishlists containing “design” in their title
increased by 175% in 2021 compared to 2019; and in 2021, unique listings were added to nearly 20
million wish lists.
Globetrender believes this shift in using the destination as a starting point for planning a trip will be revolutionary for the way people travel. “Most of us can only think of a few dozen cities to type in the search field, but there are Airbnbs in 100,000 cities around the world,” the company explains. “Airbnb categories make it easy to discover millions of unique homes you never knew existed.”
How it works? When you open Airbnb, you are presented with with 56 categories that organize homes by style, location, or proximity to travel activity. When you search for a destination, your search results are also organized by relevant categories to this destination. As you see different categories, the map intelligently zooms in to show you where the houses are located.
Airbnb’s second innovation is called “Split stays”. Society says Iver the past three months, nearly half of nights booked on Airbnb were for trips of a week or more. To make it easy for people to stay in more than one place, it now allows people to divide their journey between two houses.
Airbnb says when looking for a speciIfc destination, split stays automatically appear in the search results. They too appear in 14 categories – including Camping, National Parks, Skiing and SurIfng – to inspire people to stay in two destinations as part of a longer trip. 
For example, when traveling through national parks Category, Split Stays might suggest a pair of homes near Zion National Park and the Grand Canyon.
When viewing Split Stays on a map, an animated line visually connects the two houses to show users the distance between them and the sequence of stays. Once people have selected a Split Stay, they are “guided thanks to an easy-to-use interface to book each stay, one accommodation at a time”.
Finally, Airbnb has also launched a new insurance product called AirCover, which it says is the “most complete travel protection”. The company says, “AirCover is always included and always free, and this represents the biggest Airbnb customer service upgrade in a decade.
With AirCover, guests are covered by four types of protection each time they stay at an Airbnb…
- Reservation Protection Guarantee: In the unlikely event that a Host needs to cancel your reservation
within 30 days of registration, we will Iffind a similar or better home, or we’ll give you your money back. - Registration Guarantee: If you can’t check in to your home and the Host can’t fix the problem,
good Iffind a similar or better home for the duration of your original stay, or we will refund you. - Guarantee Get what you booked: If at any time during your stay you Ifand your ad is not as
announced – for example, the refrigerator stops working and your host cannot easily Ifx this, or there
there are fewer rooms than indicated – you will have three days to report this and we Ifand you a similar
or better at home, or we’ll refund you. - 24 hour security line – If you ever feel unsafe, you’ll have priority access to specially trained security guards
officers, day and night.
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