Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky has confirmed the company is preparing to be IPO-ready "as soon as possible" – but added it didn't intend to go public "in the near-term".
The update comes as Airbnb announced Trips, adding more than 500 single and multi-day experiences to its existing business. The launch, which the startup has described as the biggest in its eight-year history, will let travellers book experiences such as violin making in Paris, photography in Nairobi or truffle hunting in Florence – all from within Airbnb.
It’s a project that has been in the works for years, and Chesky has confirmed the startup is working towards an IPO, but said it had no near-term plans. "We're definitely trying to prepare the company to be IPO-ready as soon as possible. I think another way of saying that is being a mature, very well-run company with real-time financials,” he told WIRED.
Read more: Airbnb has taken on hotels, now it's gunning for the whole travel industry with Trips
“We're pretty aligned with our investors, they're very happy for us to stay private," Chesky said. “And we agree that when it's best for the business we're going to do it. So we don't have any intentions to go public in the near-term.”
Asked if the launch of Trips would soon be followed by an IPO, Chesky said that wasn't what the company had planned. “It's not the case that we were preparing to do something and then we held off for this,” he added.
In September 2015 Airbnb raised $500 million (£402m), valuing it at $30 billion. Chesky’s hope for Trips is to draw travellers away from tourist traps and into local communities and more authentic experiences. It’s an idea he describes as “mass-niche” tourism. ”We want to reinvent the trip and we want to power it by people,” Chesky said. "It's a way to step inside these hosts worlds.” Some of the experiences launching with Trips will be single-day activities such as Samurai Swordplay, while others – such as a driving classic cars in Malibu – will last for a number of days.
More than 500 experiences are launching in 12 cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence, Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo and Seoul) while Airbnb hosts in 39 other cities will be able to request to list their experiences on the platform.
Unlike Airbnb’s homes business, where people can list anything within reason, everything on Trips is curated and pre-approved by Airbnb. All the experiences available at launch come complete with professional photography and video trailers created by Airbnb.
As well as these experiences, Trips also sees the launch of a number of other features. 100 Insider Guidebooks will highlight recommendations from “cultural experts” in local neighbourhoods in six cities; Places will add one million “hidden gem” recommendations from Airbnb hosts around the world; and Audio Walks, a partnership with Detour, will let travellers discover Los Angeles, San Francisco, Paris, London and Tokyo by walking and listening. Another new feature will let Airbnb travellers arrange meet-ups in any city to connect with other guests and locals.
"As compared to Yelp or some of those products where it's a place and what 500 people say about the place. This is a person and what they recommend,” said Chesky. "There is no app for travel today that is really end-to-end. We're going from homes to eventually everything, at least in the context of a trip or having an experience.”
Unlike Airbnb’s homes business, everything launching on Trips is Instant Book. It’s a move that could help address the racial bias and discrimination uncovered on the platform in December 2015. “That doesn't solve bias, but that statistically is the number one thing we can do,” said Chesky, referring to making more and more of Airbnb Instant Book.
An update to Airbnb’s back-end identify authentication system has also been launched to coincide with Trips. All hosts and guests will be asked to scan an official government ID and take a selfie to improve authentication and security.
Updated 18.11.16, 22:05: Extra context and quotes have been added to this story to more accurately reflect Brian Chesky's comments about Airbnb's IPO plans.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
