Brian Chesky Says Big Things Are Coming to Airbnb in 2025

Big changes are possible I will come to Airbnb next year. In an interview on WIRED’s Big Interview even in San Francisco on Tuesday, company founder and CEO Brian Chesky told global planning director Katie Drummond that he hopes that, by 2025, “people say ‘that was one of the biggest restructurings of the company in recent memory.’ “

Although Chesky kept details to himself, he said the company hopes to rethink its Experience category, which he says consumers love but doesn’t think has caught on as much as possible. This move seems to be an extension of Chesky’s belief in the value of physical experience and physical community, which he still thinks trumps most digital experiences, even in the age of AI.

In an attempt to prove that, even two years into the AI ​​revolution, fundamentally very little has changed for most people, Chesky challenged the room to look at the apps on their home screens and think how much they have changed. with generative AI. He suggests there are quite a few, including Airbnb, but he also sees changes on the horizon, likening the new AI we’re in to “the Internet in 1993, before search engines” when using what he calls “the phone book. ” to find websites.

“AI is starting to change our digital world, but it hasn’t changed the most important part of our lives, which is the physical world,” Chesky said. At Airbnb, where the product isn’t the company’s app but its homes are connected and felt, that’s still the most important thing. When AI will really start to change the physical world, Chesky posits, “is when the apps on your phone are completely different.”

“Ten years ago, everyone thought we’d all be in self-driving cars right now,” Chesky said, noting that while there’s more on his street, it hasn’t penetrated the rest of America. “We overestimate how much technology can change in the short term, but perhaps underestimate how much it will change in the long term. AI will take time to enter the physical world but once it does, I think it will change everything.”

Drummond also asked Chesky about his leadership style, which has become a hot topic in Silicon Valley because of phrases like “founder mode” (he noted that he didn’t take out money) and the widely held view that he doesn’t. -one meetings now.

He said that since the pandemic, when Airbnb lost 80 percent of its business in eight weeks and was forced to lay off a third of the company, he has been more involved in the day-to-day details of what his employees are doing. , telling Drummond that he thinks it’s important to teach people about work. Chesky says he oversees between 75 and 80 projects at a time, devoting half of his 60-plus hour work week to weekly reviews. While he may no longer be able to do repetitive, structured tasks alone, he says he makes more phone calls and relies on team meetings, where he can meet with multiple levels of staff at once.