With 56 new vacation rental categories, Airbnb is completely changing the way users can search for homes.
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Edid you want to work from a design masterpiece or vacation in a beautiful country house? Well, Airbnb hopes to encourage users to do just that. On May 11, the vacation rental platform introduced several new features, including a website redesign that focuses on “categories” that sorts 4.4 million of its listed homes into 56 (sometimes fun and quirky) groups. ) designed to inspire travellers. Categories highlight details such as the style of a stay (such as container houses or guest rooms), location (for example, sea side or on the edge of the lake), and proximity to specific activities (such as surfing or ski).
At a media event in New York, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky also announced two other new features for the platform on Tuesday bringing “the biggest change for Airbnb in a decade.” One such feature is its “split stays” feature, which allows users to seamlessly split a trip (of a week or more) between two homes. The other feature, called AirCover, is a set of free travel protections that Airbnb offers to all customers when they book with the company.
What are Airbnb’s new categories?
According to Chesky, Airbnb created these new categories to showcase homes that users wouldn’t think of searching for themselves — stays like trullis (a trullo is a round stone house with a conical roof, FYI), vineyardsand shepherd’s huts. These 56 categories were created using machine learning and by Airbnb’s selection team and reflect industry trends. According to the company, nights booked in the first quarter of 2022 for summer trips to unique homes increased by 80% compared to 2019.
Previously, Airbnb organized its homes primarily by location, prompting users to enter the desired travel destination, along with travel dates and number of guests. The new web design harkens back to Airbnb’s early days when its “collections” showcased cool and unique properties around the world.
Chesky told AFAR that the old collections feature has resulted in thousands of new properties being added to the website, and he expects the same trend with Airbnb’s new design-by-category rollout.
“Let’s take the ‘design’ [Airbnbs]. I think a lot of people have designer homes that are like, “Well, I don’t think my house is Airbnb ready.” I hope when they see Frank Lloyd Wright houses, it’s like, “Well Frank Lloyd Wright houses can be on Airbnb, maybe my house can be too,” he said.
So how wacky and interesting do these categories get? Here are some of our favorite examples that you can reserve.
Camping
Five of Airbnb’s new categories, including the camping category, fall under the activity category (other activity categories are golf, skiing, ski slopes, and surfing). This canvas tent in Tetonia, Idaho stands out as a spectacular stargazing spot, with a queen bed, outdoor shower area, and outdoor kitchen. This Airbnb is one of 32,000 stays in the camping category.
Book now: Teton Canvas Prairie Tent
Campaign
Those browsing location-specific categories like “countryside” may care a lot more about landscapes than interiors. To accommodate this, Airbnb’s curation team selects photos that emphasize the particular category a user is viewing when browsing the website. In this case, the scenic meadow and mountainous landscape surrounding this Italian home are at the forefront of the imagery.
Book now: Nature House-Bondo Valley Nature Reserve
This cozy cabin near Kirkjubæjarklaustur, Iceland showcases its remote location under the countryside category. Beyond the two-bedroom, one-bathroom home, visitors can explore nearby natural features like a small stream and lava field. There are over 200,000 homes in Airbnb’s Dream Country category.
Book now: Fossar cabin
Design
Travel to Girona, Spain, and you’ll find this cubic living on a rural hillside. Featuring floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the house, this Airbnb emphasizes its stunning views of the Mediterranean and Cabo de Creus National Park. This home is one of 27,000 homes featured in Airbnb’s design category.
Book now: Sunflower House
Even homes designed by famous architects like Frank Lloyd Wright are not beyond the reach of Airbnb. Featured in more than 20 national and regional magazines, this stay in Two Rivers, Wisconsin offers a 63-foot-long living room and wood-panelled ceilings, among other features. As part of the company’s revamp, users searching for homes in the new design category can see who designed the home and all the posts that featured it.
Book now: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Schwartz House
OH MY GOD!
Some stays on Airbnb are quirky beyond any category. And for that, the company made an “OMG!” category with stays that will leave you with exactly that impression. Take Quetzalcoatl’s Nest, a resort in Mexico that delights guests with its freeform design and colorful exteriors, as a prime example of the category’s 700 stays.
Book now: Quetzalcoatl’s Nest
If you’ve wanted to experience an aquatic life without being afraid of what lurks in the depths of the ocean, dive into this New Zealand Airbnb. This stay deserved an OMG! spot through its sheer amount of oddities – nautical dummy and boat helm included. Bring along your Beatles-loving crew and board a ship that, according to the host, is “fueled by love; because that’s what makes the world go round.
Book now: yellow submarine
A few new Airbnb categories that we love. . .
The examples above are just a few of the stays listed. One of the biggest categories is “amazing pools” (which includes 1.5 million stays), tempting users with everything from scenic dives in brazil for luxury baths in Cyprus. Another category, the “ryokans”, presents historical and elegant stays found throughout Japan. On Tuesday, Chesky said he anticipates there will be “many more categories” added to the list.
And these categories aren’t the only way Airbnb encourages users to further explore its unique properties. For people who want to take a longer trip — and many of them are, as the company reports that nearly half of stays booked in Q1 2022 were for a week or more — Airbnb has introduced its split stays as part of its summer outing.
What to know about Airbnb’s split stays feature
Airbnb’s “split stay” feature splits a user’s trip between two homes when searching for stays of a week or more. This feature appears in several ways, one of them being when users run out of Airbnb options after entering their trip details in the search bar. The feature also appears for users looking for longer stays in certain categories, such as “national parks”, where the feature can ask if users want to split their time between stays in Joshua Tree and If we.
What to know about Airbnb’s AirCover option
Starting May 31, Airbnb will no longer consider contracting COVID-19 as a reason to cancel a rental and receive a refund. Instead, Airbnb offers AirCover protection, a free service for everyone who books through the platform. The protection consists of four components:
- Reservation Protection Guarantee: If an Airbnb host needs to cancel a reservation within 30 days of check-in, the platform will find a similar or better listing or refund the guest.
- Registration Guarantee: If a guest can’t check in and the host can’t resolve the issue, Airbnb will find a similar or better place to stay or issue a refund.
- Guarantee Get what you booked: If guests discover at any time during their stay that the listing doesn’t match what the host advertised, guests have three days to report the issue and Airbnb will either find a similar or better home or refund guests.
- 24 hour security line: Airbnb offers specially trained security guards in case guests feel unsafe.
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