Airbnb is expanding far beyond its core home sharing model to transform into an all-in-one travel ecosystem. The platform is rolling out a comprehensive suite of new services including in-app car rentals, private car pickups, grocery deliveries, and access to thousands of curated boutique hotels. Can you take us through the core philosophy of expanding Airbnb beyond its core revenue of home sharing into an end-to-end trip planner, and how do features like AI review highlights fundamentally change how a guest experiences its trip?
Well, ultimately it comes back to what business are you in? And I think when people look at Airbnb on the surface, we're in the business of finding homes for travel. But I think there's a much bigger business, which is the business of the trip. You know, you don't necessarily always remember the place you stay, but you're going to remember what you do on your vacation. And we want to basically compose the entire end-to-end experience. So, we talked to our guests, our customers. We have hundreds of millions of them. We asked, 'What do you want most?' And some of the things they told us are: number one, when you get to Airbnb, they love they have a kitchen but they don't feel like doing a grocery run. So what if groceries could be in the refrigerator? Then they told us, you know, there's a lot of airports where Uber doesn't exist or it's really hard to get to my Airbnb. Hence, welcome pickups. Sometimes we heard, like for example, people going to Tokyo and they can't check in till like 2:00 p.m. They get to the airport in the morning and they want to walk around Tokyo. Well, where do they put their bags? Hence, luggage storage. Car rentals. 23% of our guests rent a car. It can be very, very simple. What if there was an easy way, like it is to book a home, to get a car? You know exactly what you're getting. And we give really, really good discounts for all these different products. Finally, hotels. You know, many trips are better in Airbnb if you want to travel with your family, a longer stay, a big group, you want to have a cultural experience. But let's say you want to travel last minute for one night for business or there's not a lot of Airbnb, a hotel could be a really good option. But we're not focusing on all hotels. We're focusing on the 60% of hotels in the world that are the boutiques and independents, smaller, a little bit more on-brand Airbnb. So the philosophy is to be in the business of the trip, to create these incredible memories, and to really follow the customer and ask them what do you want to make your trip more magical. Now, the second part of your question was about all the AI features, AI review highlights, AI listing highlights. We have AI customer service, and I think that's the highest level. I'd say AI is one of the best things that ever happened to Airbnb because Airbnb's business is really hard. Customer service is really hard. AI makes it a lot easier when you have a host and a guest often speaking different languages. The AI can help adjudicate and help both sides much more efficiently, and it can really help our agents support people. On reviews, we have a billion reviews that have been left on Airbnb. That's a lot of reviews to read. AI can summarize them. So our business is a business that's about people. It's a real long tail, and AI can really make our business much simpler.
Brian, which of these upgrades will India get to see on day one, and what is the specific timeline for the full deployment of these upgrades?
So, the timeline is basically where you're traveling. So if you are traveling to any city where we offer car rentals, luggage storage, airport pickups, groceries, or we have boutique hotels, it's available today. So if somebody in India were to travel to the United States to a big city or to a big city in Europe, it would be available now or soon. As far as bringing these services specifically to India for the domestic travelers, and about 80% of our business in India are people traveling within India, that will be a little bit. We don't have a specific timeline, but everything we announced today we plan to bring to India.
Right. India is one of the fastest-growing travel markets globally. Wanted to understand how important is the market for Airbnb and where does it stand in your global strategy?
I mean, it's one of the most important markets because it's one of the biggest markets. And, you know, it's got the largest population in the world. I think it's got a very young population. Young populations tend to gravitate to Airbnb. We index very highly with Gen Z. India's got a very large Gen Z population. I don't think many people in India that are young are, you know, as predisposed to traveling in a hotel the traditional way, especially a chain hotel, as maybe older people are in other countries. And I think it's going to be a major part of our story for the next 10, 20 years. My approach in India is to play the long game, to really invest in the country, to invest in the community, and let everyone in India know that Airbnb is here to stay and we want India to be one of the strongest countries in the world on Airbnb.
And if you were to rank India among your top markets, where would it stand?
I mean, it's the fastest-growing large market in the world, and it would definitely be one of the very, very top. I mean, it's one of the ones I'm most focused on. It's one of the ones I expect to grow the fastest, and I think one day it will be one of the biggest markets in the world on Airbnb. I mean, India, I don't need to tell everyone watching about India. They know more about India than I do, but we all know that India has a great history of hospitality. We all know that India has some of the best hosts in the world. We all know that people do spiritual quests in India. We all know it's got one of the largest emerging middle classes in the world. And one of the things the middle class wants to do when they emerge is they want to travel. They want to see the world, starting with their own country but eventually crossing borders and learning about other cultures.
And what kind of investments and localized product developments can we see from Airbnb in India over the next few years?
Well, I mean, our biggest office outside the United States is in India. And, you know, I've been to India. I'd like to go back soon. It was one of my more memorable travel experiences. I went to Delhi. And I think that we're going to see a lot of investment in India. So definitely expect us to take this market very, very seriously. And stay tuned because we have a lot of exciting things coming.
Brian, geopolitical conflicts have altered political and economic conditions across the world. What impacts have you observed from the ongoing Middle East war on hospitality and bookings, both within the affected regions and in terms of shifting global travel corridors?
