How Guests Find Your Airbnb Now: New AI Search and Friends’ Maps

Thibault Masson (0:00)

Sometimes, it takes a lot for you to be able to see and find the listings you want to book. Well, that's an issue that Airbnb has, right? It needs to enable its traveler to find the best vacation rental among the millions of listings it offers. I don't know, seven, eight, more millions of listings, right? So, as property manager, the great question for you is, what does a guest find ma- vacation rentals? Airbnb's full update changes the answer in two ways. And we'll see that too. Welcome to RSU by Pricelapse Weekly Podcast. Subscribe now. First, the AI search. Guests can now just say what they want, out loud or typed. And the AI digs through those millions of listings to match them with yours, as long as your listing gives it the right detail. And you'll see how it filters down, finds the best possibilities. It's quite interesting. I will show you that. Second, Airbnb's new social network, or the expanding social network that Airbnb has. Guests can now see where their friends stayed and book the same places. So word of mouth, right, referral, the best discovery channel there is, now happens inside Airbnb.

So you can imagine, right, your properties are being discovered by the friends of people who stayed at your place. Quite fantastic. I'll show you both things on screen, the AI search and the impact of the social network, and finish also with two things to fix in your listings for this to work for yourself this week. So this is Airbnb's homepage.

See the switch here at the top? That's the new AI search. I turn it on, and the where, and who box come one single box.

When who come one single search box. I could type stuff, but for this, to show you even better how it is, I'll just talk to it the way people do on their phone. Let's imagine a house, a house in Nashville for tonight. Now watch the top of the page, right? My sentence just became filters. Nashville, United States, entire home for the house. So where you went to homes, you went to tonight. I'm recording this on October 9th.

In Nashville, I hope it's big enough for you to see this.

It says here Nashville, October 9th to 10th. I didn't enter your home and house. I didn't have to say who was coming, but I work on this and I can see a few results. What I couldn't do though, I can go back to search and add more details. And you see that the filters will change. It's a house for two plus our baby plus our dog. I'm looking for. So as I enter this search, what's interesting, you'll see that it has taken into account the fact that you have two guests, an infant and one pet. If it's too small, believe me, in the filter it says two guests, one infant, one pet. Also, what's very interesting then, the filters change, right? Now it says I'm looking for a place that allows pets, because I did say this, I'm bringing a pet, a dog, right? So it's like, it's either on is allow pets. What's interesting as well, that the rest of the filters also change. For example, there's a filter called crib, crib that's showing up, right? Because I'd said I was bringing my baby. It's not on because maybe I don't need this by default, because maybe I'm bringing mine, but I could turn it on. Okay, so you can see how it's very interesting, this AI search, I could just could be typing, right? But here I can just talk to it.

It's taking this to account to adapt the search. And so to be also very powerful, I can filter down by talking a bit more. And this will update the filters by showing, by already being on some key filters to allow my search or suggesting filters that may be useful. I find it quite interesting that the filters adapt to what I want. Now, does it always do what I need?

Let's see, right? It's a natural search, but for the moment, I give a case that's very easy. Let's imagine I show me Ian Chesky's How on Airbnb. And what's getting out here, if you're listening to the podcast, it shows something like, something, nothing's coming up for that. Try asking for a place to stay or a new experience to try. So maybe Ian Chesky's house is still there or not. Something that's not doing either, I want to say something such as, show me the worst of the worst of the houses on Airbnb. The houses with my French accent. Again, nothing's coming out. So just wanted, while I'm doing this, I wanted to show you in a way, it's natural search, but not like, you know, if you go to chat.pt or cloud and talk to it, you can kind of naturally say things and figure it out. Here, it's getting what I want. If I'm still staying in a scenario where I'm really stating out loud what, where, when I want something for how many people, right? If I start going a bit off script, I show you the best, show me the worst, or show me Brian Shesky's listing, I'm not getting any results. But probably that's coming up. That was the first thing I wanted to show you. Now, the second thing I want to show you is another way for people to discover your listings is through referral by friends, in a way, an active referral. So if I go to my personal profile, of course you can see, I hope that's nothing too things, you can see my bot.me, that's my new profile, by the way, because after 15 years, I relaunched at least 10 years, but 15 years I relaunched my profile, and a new name.