said without citation that hotel prices on a year-over-year basis have gone up 7.4 % in the city .
Local Law 18 was ostensibly meant to address the housing crunch , Chesky said , but , according to him , the average rent in New York City is up , unexpectedly , 3.4 % ( again not citing a source ). According to Apartmentlist . com , New York City rental prices are up 2.2 % YOY August 2024 .
“ We want to make sure that when we have regulation with cities , it ’ s a win-win ,” Chesky said . “ I don ’ t think New Yorkers won . I don ’ t think the city won . I don ’ t think people visiting New York won . I think the only people that won were hotels .”
Brian Chesky , co-founder and CEO of Airbnb , in discussion with Skift Founder Rafat Ali at the Skift Global Forum in New York . Photo credit : Skift Global Forum
IN THE HOPPER Airbnb ’ s stock is flat year-to-date but it is still pushing forward and innovating with a pipeline of coming attractions . Though Airbnb ’ s DNA is in short-term stays , Chesky is adamant in building out its longer-term stays , which currently stand at 17 % of its business ( defined as stays 30 days or longer ). " This is going to be a huge opportunity ," he said , framing it this way : “ If you wanted to go to Buenos Aires for 45 days , what website do you go to get a rental ?” He said that the longer the reservation , the higher the stakes are for what he calls “ sight unseen ,” where you can ’ t see it before you book it . “ So stays of 30 to 90 days , really monthly to seasonal stays , that ’ s a huge growth opportunity for Airbnb .”
And then there are the products . In April 2023 , Airbnb paused the onboarding of new experiences and removed them from its homepage . The move was made to allow Airbnb to focus on its core business . But they will be making a comeback , according to Chesky .
In October , Airbnb delivered its winter release that included a new and novel hosting service , matching people that have homes but don ’ t have time to host , with people that have time to host but don ’ t have homes . Next May , Chesky promised numerous offerings , including experiences coming back in a much bigger way . “ I anticipate every year we launch two to three things that could eventually generate a billion dollars a year ,” he said , revealing to the audience that 40 % of Airbnb ’ s revenue is now free cash flow . “ My bread and butter is going to be in innovation .”
AI RIDE No tech CEO gets out of a discussion without being asked about artificial intelligence and its current and future implications . On this , Chesky is quite persuaded . “ This is probably going to change the world more than the Industrial Revolution ,” he said of AI .
Chesky is a close confidante of OpenAI founder Sam Altman , having helped him navigate some of the several publicized crises he dealt with . “ I believe in the importance of AI and I think that we have to get [ it ] right ,” he said . “ The question isn ’ t , ‘ Will we get the technology right ?’ It ’ s , ‘ How will the technology intersect with society ?’” He said he wanted to be helpful and thoughtful about how AI is brought to the masses .
That AI is going to change the world is not a novel idea , but it is worth preparation ,
because , as Chesky put it , “ It ’ s going to change the world much more than anybody realizes .”
It ’ s also going to take time , he said , longer than anyone realizes . “ This decade , things aren ’ t going to change as much as people think , and next decade , things are going to change a lot more ,” he said .
While Nvidia and its chips and ChatGPT and its model set the groundwork , Chesky said the most important layer is the application layer , but “ there really hasn ’ t been a lot of development or breakthroughs at that layer ,” he said . “ The holy grail is going to be when we figure out the interface at the application layer that connects to the model .”
The future for Airbnb could involve a lot more than what it is now . Imagine Amazon if it stuck to only selling books or if Apple never released the iPod , Chesky posited . The evolution of Airbnb into something beyond homes isn ’ t only hypothetical , it ’ s likely . “ If we start with travel , that ’ s our nearest adjacency ,” Chesky said . “ That makes the most sense . But if we start with travel , that means everything we sell will be a subset of our core business . And , eventually , we do think there ’ s a path to be doing more than just travel , but we ’ re going to start with the way that consumers think about us now , which is travel .”
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