In its 2025 Summer Release, Airbnb announced a bold pivot back to Experiences and launched a completely new category: Services. These moves aim to transform the company from a home rental platform into a full-spectrum travel brand—one that doesn’t just offer where you stay, but how you experience a destination.
It’s not Airbnb’s first attempt. Their original Experiences program, launched in 2016, struggled to scale and was quietly paused in 2023. But this time, Airbnb is taking a more integrated and curated approach, one that blends local experiences, hotel-like services, and personalization, all inside a redesigned app.
A Revamped Offering What’s New in 2025
Experiences 2.0
Airbnb’s new Experiences are more tightly curated, better vetted, and far more ambitious in scope. You’ll find over 650 cities now offering everything from Notre-Dame tours hosted by architects to stargazing hikes and anime events hosted by global celebrities. A new subcategory, Airbnb Originals, includes standout, repeatable experiences designed in partnership with stars like Megan Thee Stallion and Patrick Mahomes.
Airbnb Services
This entirely new category introduces hotel-style amenities for your Airbnb stay, think personal chefs, massages, personal trainers, hair stylists, and more. All services are booked directly in the app and are already available in over 260 cities.
A New App for a New Strategy
Airbnb redesigned its app to unite Homes, Experiences, and Services into a single itinerary. New social features allow groups to coordinate bookings, message hosts, and see who’s joining which activity. AI-powered recommendations now guide travellers based on trip context, preferences, and past behaviour.
Why Now
There are a few clear motivations behind this move.
Travel recovery is maturing, and Airbnb needs to grow outside of its core lodging product. Experience-led travel is booming, especially among younger, social-first audiences. Platform loyalty is harder than ever, and Airbnb wants to own the entire trip from arrival to checkout.
But Airbnb also has something to prove. Their original Experiences model lacked quality control, repeatability, and profitability. Many hosts didn’t want to offer more than lodging. This relaunch reflects a shift toward scale and curation, modelled more closely on entertainment and luxury services than the gig economy.
Risks and Headwinds
This strategy isn’t without challenges.
Experiences are operationally complex. Unlike listings, they’re harder to scale and require manual quality control, logistics coordination, and talent curation. Margins are thinner. These aren’t asset-light like listings. Airbnb needs to ensure the economics work for both hosts and itself. The audience is different. Some travellers may not be looking for curated activities or high-touch services, especially budget travellers.
Airbnb is betting that travellers will pay for more curated, convenient experiences. But the path to scale is narrower than it looks.
The Battle for Visibility How Competitive Is the Experiences Market in Organic Search
As Airbnb revives its Experiences product, it faces a steep uphill climb in one critical area: organic search visibility.
Dominated by Aggregators and OTAs
The experiences market is already saturated with strong organic performers like GetYourGuide, Viator, Klook, Tiqets, and Eventbrite. These platforms have built massive content libraries, millions of indexed experience pages, and deeply integrated SEO strategies tied to both location and category terms.
Airbnb’s SEO Challenges
Airbnb’s original Experiences URLs were often thin in content, lacked proper structured data, and didn’t always target transactional search intent. Compounding this, Airbnb deprioritised Experiences in search results and internal linking for nearly two years.
Now, to compete, Airbnb must rebuild its internal linking strategy to surface Experiences alongside listings. It needs to build dedicated SEO landing pages per city, per category, and per persona. Content hubs or guides that match top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel queries will be critical. It must also ensure its new Services and Originals pages are optimised for both discovery and conversion.
Brand Equity Isn’t Enough
While Airbnb’s brand carries huge authority, search intent for experiences is often unbranded and localised. This puts Airbnb in direct competition with niche providers that have years of head start in building keyword coverage and content depth.
Unless Airbnb invests seriously in its search presence, technical SEO, content strategy, structured data, and local optimisation, it risks making a great product that no one finds.
Final Thought
Airbnb’s renewed push into Experiences and its new Services model are bold, well-timed, and aligned with traveller trends. But execution is everything. In a market crowded with experienced players and strong organic search ecosystems, simply having the best product won’t be enough. Airbnb now has to win the attention game, and that means getting serious about SEO, content, and discoverability.