Let’s set the scene: You’ve just booked a villa in Oaxaca. Instead of googling restaurants or scanning sites for “authentic” things to do, your Airbnb app recommends a mezcal tasting with a third-generation distiller, a horseback ride through sacred Incan trails with a cultural anthropologist, and a private dinner cooked in your kitchen by a Michelin-starred chef. 

This is the kind of trip Airbnb is trying to engineer. With its 2025 summer roll out, Airbnb has officially left the building–or at least, the traditional bounds of home sharing. Seventeen years after upending travel by making homes bookable like hotels, the platform is redefining what it truly means to experience a destination. It’s no longer just about where you sleep. It’s about who you meet, what you taste, and how intimately you connect with the culture around you.

The new direction unfolds across three branches: Airbnb Services, Airbnb Experiences, and Airbnb Originals.

Services offer what you might call portable hospitality: facials with local botanicals, sushi rolled by a private chef, or last-minute blowouts, all bookable whether you’re mid-vacation or just staying home. It’s an expansion of the platform’s scope, nudging into lifestyle territory.

Experiences have been newly reimagined for 650 cities worldwide. It leans heavily on access and expertise: private ramen-making with Bib Gourmand chefs, etiquette training with a former royal butler, and fashion consultations with Hollywood stylists. Think less sightseeing, more seeing through someone else’s eyes.

Then there are Airbnb Originals–limited-run collaborations with public figures and cultural tastemakers. These include everything from baking alongside Raphaelle Elbaz at the beloved French Bastards bakery to embracing your inner anime alter ego with Megan Thee Stallion on her Otaku Hottie Quest and running drills with Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City.

Underlying all of it is a redesigned app that tries to act less like a booking site and more like a personal concierge. You can browse, reserve, message your chef, and build an itinerary without switching tabs. A new profile feature even logs where you’ve stayed and what you've done–a kind of social scrapbook for the travel-obsessed.

Of course, these changes raise questions. Is this kind of highly-produced, highly-mediated travel more immersive–or just another filter between traveler and place? Airbnb is betting on the former. By partnering with experts, local creatives, and global personalities, they’re banking on experience as the new currency of travel. 

One thing is clear: the company is no longer content to just provide a roof over your head. The focus is now on cultural communion, powered by people, with the convenience of a concierge and the polish of a boutique hotel. It’s a bold swing at reimagining what it means to “go somewhere.”

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