Airbnb’s impact on housing shortage is ‘overstated,’ boss Brian Chesky tells EMILY
Airbnb boss Brian Chesky is all too aware of the negative reputation his holiday booking app has garnered in recent years.
Set up as a way to let homeowners rent spare rooms to tourists, the firm has now become a byword for overtourism, rapacious landlords and a ballooning housing crisis.
Minutes after bounding on to a stage at the company’s office in San Francisco, he states that the app still has individuals – especially those who need a bit of cash – at its heart.
Most of the app’s ‘hosts’, those who rent their properties for short-term lets on the app, are ‘everyday people with a home to share’, he claims.
He makes his case to a crowd at the firm’s summer update, in which he unveils several new features in an Apple-style glitzy event.
Under lights that would not look out of place at a pop concert, he tells his audience he wants to ‘dispel a common myth that our hosts are just a bunch of big, nameless, faceless property management companies’.
‘That is not the case,’ he insists.
Building bridges: Brian Chesky, boss of San Francisco-based Airbnb, is adding features such as groceries on arrival, rental cars and luggage storage
Given what he is announcing, the audience could be forgiven for doubting his claims that Airbnb is still focused on the smaller hosts that helped build it into the $80 billion (£59 billion) giant it is today.
The company faces a widening crackdown by authorities in tourist hotspots across the world. Yet the firm has unveiled plans to become a one-stop travel organiser, or an ‘Amazon for services, at least for travelling and living’, as Chesky put it at this month’s event.
It has announced a raft of new features – including allowing tourists to order groceries in advance, rental cars and luggage storage.
And, curiously, the group will now allow independent and boutique hotels to advertise rooms on its platform, a radical departure from its spare-room roots.
‘I think when people look for Airbnb, they look for something that feels a little more local, personal, and authentic,’ Chesky says. ‘Most boutiques will never be quite as authentic as a person’s home, but they’re typically a lot more authentic than a chain hotel.’
Airbnb’s pivot is the latest step in a rebrand that began last year when it launched its ‘experiences and services’ offer, which allows users to book sightseeing and cultural activities on the platform – from ‘laugh your way around the Louvre’ in Paris to ‘cow cuddling therapy’ in San Francisco.
The company went as far as recruiting pop star Sabrina Carpenter, offering users the chance to experience a day in her life.
It was an experiment that the brand says has served it well.
‘We had to get people to think of Airbnb as more than a home – that was successful,’ Chesky says.
Like many Silicon Valley firms, the company is also hoping artificial intelligence will help boost its fortunes.
Chesky has told his team the coming year will be a ‘land grab’ as companies figure out how to sell products and services through AI, with everyone from retailers to travel agents braced for consumers to conduct entire transactions through chatbots.
Airbnb has already added AI-serviced features – such as customising recommendations and AI summaries of reviews – to its app to get a head start on its rivals.
But its grand expansion plans come at a tricky time for the firm.
Allure: Airbnb users were even offered a day with pop star Sabrina Carpenter
Founded in 2008 when Chesky and his co-founder Joe Gebbia decided to rent out an air mattress in their San Francisco flat, it faces mounting criticism that it fuels overtourism and unaffordable housing. Once presented as an alternative to pricey hotels and organised tourism, Airbnb is now seen as the very problem it was purportedly set up to solve.
In the UK, critics in places such as Cornwall say properties that would have been rented to local workers have been turned into holiday homes meaning staff vital for the industry are being priced out.
The backlash is yet more intense elsewhere. Anti-tourist protesters in Barcelona frequently hold up signs with slogans such as ‘your Airbnb used to be my home’ while other European cities have brought in rules to clamp down on holiday lets such as making it illegal to rent out homes without a permit or capping the number of days properties can be let out.
Chesky, 44, admits changing the firm’s reputation as a platform for faceless property firms and landlords is a big hurdle.
He says: ‘I’m very frustrated by this notion that they’re all property managers. They’re not.’
The boss claims that while there are management firms and corporate landlords behind its 5.5 million properties, they are often heavily regulated. But he does concede that the company may have played a part in creating some housing shortages.
‘Are we ever part of the problem? Sometimes. But I think it’s overstated,’ he says.
He claims that in his hometown of New York, where Airbnb was blamed for increasing costs, both housing and hotel prices rose after a crackdown on short-term rentals in 2023.
Even in its San Francisco backyard, the firm is facing difficulties. As we climb to the top of the famous mosaic steps on 16th Avenue, a local tells me that a clampdown on short-term rentals means many tourists visiting the Fog City can only stay outside its main areas.
San Francisco is also grappling with a worrying rise in drug addiction and homelessness, which is putting off visitors.
‘Tourists think it’s going to be like Armageddon, but then they get here and it’s lovely,’ a tourist representative in the city tells me.
Red tape is not the only thing hitting demand. Across the US, visitor numbers have plunged this year due to tougher border controls introduced by Donald Trump and with it a growing fear among travellers of being detained by immigration and customs agents.
But as the summer holiday season gets into full swing, there are some bright spots for Airbnb.
One is the looming Fifa World Cup, which despite fears of a slump in demand caused by Trump’s immigration policy, is still expected to see legions of football fans flock to the US, Canada and Mexico when the tournament begins next week.
In its most recent results Airbnb, which was listed on New York’s technology-focused Nasdaq exchange in 2020, raising $3.7 billion, said it expected to host ‘more guests than at any event’ in its history, though the figures themselves fell short of expectations as it was hit by a wave of cancellations sparked by the war in Iran.
While Chesky admits he is ‘concerned’ about the impact of the cost of living crisis on the business, he sticks to his message that Airbnb is ‘part of the solution’.
However, as the company’s critics get louder and its customers’ budgets get tighter, such optimism may become hard to sustain even in the glorious San Francisco sun.
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