You Can Now Rent Friends With Airbnb

Tim Duggan is the Publisher and Co-Founder of Junkee Media,…

Eight-and-a-half years after launching its peer-to-peer accommodation marketplace, Airbnb has announced that it wants to help out on a different part of your holiday – what you actually do once you get to your destination.

As well as renting a room or house, you can now book to go on hosted experiences when you land in a new city, or – if you’re up for it – share your passion and interests with other people by hosting your own city tours for paying guests.

“Homes is just one small part of a great journey,” said Airbnb CEO and Co-Founder Brian Chesky at the Globe Theatre in LA as he explained the addition of Experiences and Places to the existing Homes platform on Airbnb. “The problem is it’s really hard to meet anyone who actually lives there. How do you immerse yourself in a local community?” There are two types of Airbnb Experiences: multi-day trips, and single experiences that last a few hours. Anyone can be a tour guide, sharing their interests and knowledge with others, and anyone can book a curated experience when they travel.

https---press.atairbnb.com-app-uploads-2016-11-LN003_London_Lycra_Rachel_Exp1-00008-T_R3-2000x1333 — Y’know, for those times you want to go running on holidays.

Want to go surfing with an LA local then camp under the stars? Or maybe cycle with a bunch of Mexican food enthusiasts to a taco joint in Miami? How about learning burlesque in London? Or going fabric shopping in Tokyo? Or running with a marathon training squad in Nairobi? As Airbnb Trips grows, there’ll be experiences for every type of traveller, no matter how your niche your interests are.

It’s the first step in Airbnb’s new plan, announced at an Apple-style keynote as part of the Airbnb Open conference in LA, attended by 7,000 hosts from around the world. As well as Experiences, the newly launched Places section on the app also has curated guides, audio walks and the ability to arrange spontaneous meet-ups with other Airbnb travellers.

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Airbnb Trips launches today with an update from the App Store, with 500 experiences available in 12 cities worldwide including London, Paris and Toyko. Trips will launch in Sydney and Queenstown in 2017, and budding hosts who want to share their own experiences in these two cities can request to list them from today.

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(Photos: supplied. The writer travelled to Airbnb Open in Los Angeles as a guest of Airbnb.)