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- Airbnb really, really wants you to share a house with a stranger.
- They've also announced a bunch of new features that make searching for rooms and private homes easier.
- These are the ones we like the most.
It was in the small Azerbaijan village of Quba that I had my best Airbnb hosting experience. After a long day in a rickety minibus and an hour in a cab with no handles on the inside, I managed to find the nondescript door to Özgün's home.
I'd picked the home on Airbnb not because I wanted to save cash or because I love sharing a bathroom with strangers, but because it was a spontaneous decision made the night before - and apart from the local hostel, it was the only place available.
But after the warmest greeting from Özgün and his partner and three days of home-cooked meals eaten in their garden while they recommended attractions and shared tips on how to get to them by hitchhiking some of Azerbaijan's sketchiest roads, I was genuinely sad to leave. And so I didn't - instead, Özgün suggested I stick around for a few more days and refused to charge me.
It was a hosting story so cheesy it'd have fitted in perfectly with the impassioned video plea by Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky to announce a slew of new updates to the platform.
In the video, a guest recounts his excellent fortune at seeing a room in Chesky's home available to rent on the website, and booking it because staying with the CEO of a multi-million dollar company sounded like a "cool experience".
And while my Quba digs may have lacked the professional photographer tagging along to capture us baking cookies or spontaneously greeting two groomed retrievers in the perfectly-lit entrance hall, Chesky would probably be pleased to learn that my experience was also pretty cool.
Whether it's to enhance the travel experience or eat more of the hoteliers' pie, it appears as if Airbnb is going big on getting people to stop checking "Entire Place" when searching for holiday rentals.
"Staying with a host was the original idea behind Airbnb. There really wasn't a better or more affordable way to experience a new place," Chesky says in the video.
But Airbnb knows that knocking on a 6-foot high wooden gate in rural Azerbaijan and moving in for a few days with total strangers - based on little more than a thumbnail profile picture - isn't in everyone's comfort zones. And for more people to try it, Chesky says, they have to feel safe and at ease doing so.
To achieve this, Airbnb has launched Rooms, a new search category with some added features, of which more than one million are available worldwide.
In the corner of every Rooms listing is what Airbnb calls the "host passport", which aims to familiarise guests with their hosts before booking.
The passport includes a snapshot of reviews, past host ratings, and level of hosting experience, along with "fun details" that the host can share about themselves.
These details resemble the kind on online dating profiles and allow hosts to include info on favourite breakfast foods, top bands, feelings about pets, decade born, and languages.
Still, the elephant in the (private) room remains that, unlike a hotel or formal accommodation setting, staying with a host is much more a roll of the dice - and a few cute photos and catchy factoids will only go so far. For it to take off as it did in the early days, Rooms will have to compete well with other accommodation types, and Airbnb categories, on price.
On this, Airbnb proudly claims in the announcement that the global average cost of a room in a shared home is about R1200.
Although this will fluctuate depending on the location and is influenced by pricey and cheap destinations, it competes well with hotel room prices. In the US, for example, the average cost of a hotel room is around R3,800.
According to stats released by Airbnb, in 2022, nights stayed in a private room listing grew by 40 percent compared to 2021, which they say points to "travellers seeking out more affordable travel amid rising cost of living."
Other new features announced
Along with the announcement of Airbnb Rooms were 50 more features. These are some of our favourites:
Total price display enables you to (finally) view the full price before taxes for a listing - both in-app and online.
New mini-pins on maps make it easier to see more Airbnbs in the area you're searching.
Transparent checkout instructions will ensure guests know exactly what to do when leaving a property, rather than guessing whether to empty rubbish bins or leave keys in a letterbox.
Airbnb says it now offers lower fees for monthly stays, perfect for remote workers.
Distance from points of interest will give you a better idea of just how far away the area's top attraction is from the listing - before booking.
Travelling families will appreciate a feature highlighting infant-friendly homes.
And, perhaps most importantly, Airbnb has added a bathroom filter for those willing to try this shared home thing, which, if you're not a fan of queuing with the host's partner for your morning ablutions, will allow you to exclude those listings from your results.
