'Playing the long game': Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky eyes India as one of firm's biggest global markets

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It's been a small impact. We can actually quantify it. It's about a 1% impact in travel, which is still a large number. 1% of Airbnb is a large number, but it's a small percentage. What I found is while it's a very serious conflict, it does affect travel. You know, international conflicts, pandemics, economic recessions do not actually stop people from traveling. You know, when the pandemic happened initially, our business dropped by 80% in 8 weeks because people were sheltering in place all over the world. But within 3 months, our entire business nearly had rebounded. And I think there's a lesson: where there's life, there's travel.

More domestic. So for example, Germans, a lot of the travel is people leaving Germany. India, 80% are traveling within India. Northern Europe travelers are older. India, they're much younger. They're more likely to be on social media. Those that are crossing borders are wanting to have cultural experiences. They're staying longer. Long lead-time bookings for international travel, kind of more near-term bookings for domestic travel. Those are just some of them. I think, you know, what different countries care about is different. I think within India, we've heard that, you know, quality is very, very important. Not that it isn't in other markets, but that's something the customers have told us. They want to make sure that they feel safe. Many people, this is one of the first times they've traveled. So the whole process is newer and more novel than say in France or Italy or UK where, you know, there's been kind of an international travel and cross-border travel market for like 300 years. And so I think in that population is older. So I think there are differences. Those differences are incredibly exciting, and I think to bet on India is to bet on the future.

Well, I mean, we've been expanding, and again, our largest office outside the United States, I believe if my stats are correct, is India. We have nearly a couple thousand people in India, and they are some of our very best people. And I think we're going to continue to invest. I think we're going to continue to invest. And I think the question is, you know, what does the world look like in the age of AI? And what I think happens is I think that it's actually increased demand. I don't think it's going to eliminate jobs. I think it will eliminate a lot of the jobs we do today, the tasks. I think it's going to create more new jobs, and I think a lot of those jobs will be in India.

I think you can expect continued investment. Can't say too much more beyond that.

Yeah, I mean, we're definitely, like, the pandemic was a once-in, you know, maybe a century kind of phenomenon, and people couldn't travel. So maybe another way of saying it was just a lot of pin-up demand. I mean, here's another way of saying it: during the pandemic, a bunch of things stopped and not everything recovered. You know, people stopped going to movie theaters, maybe not in India, but certainly the United States, and they haven't fully recovered. That's one example. A lot of small businesses shut down. Not all of them recovered. But something that totally recovered was travel. That's interesting. It turns out that that was something taken away from us that everyone universally wanted back. Nearly every country, culture in the world. I think we've reached a post-pandemic kind of equilibrium. And I think travel is going to only grow from here. To give you a stat, in 1950, I believe there were only 25 million people around the world that crossed a border and traveled. Today, that's more than a billion. Travel is one of the biggest industries in the world. Depending upon how you size it, it's the size of oil, maybe even larger. And I think it's going to only grow, and I think India is going to be one of the core engines of growth for travel.

Well, I think you can actually take the hotel industry and break it up into two groups: chain hotels and independents and boutiques. And I think that the independents and boutiques are absolutely gravitating to Airbnb. One of the things they're telling us is that a lot of independents and boutiques, this is true all over the world. It's true in the United States. And I think those watching might be familiar that there's a lot of Indian-Americans that own major independent chains or independent hotel groups and management companies. And what we've heard from a number of them is that they don't all want to franchise, but some of them feel forced to franchise, in other words, franchise to Hilton or Marriott or others. And the reason why is because they might need the loyalty program of those, the demand of those customers. They can negotiate better rates on online travel agencies. In other words, they give them economies of scale. We thought, what if we could be an ally for independent and boutique hotels? And a lot of them look at us as an alternative path where they can have lower commissions. They can have great guests. They can learn more about their guests. We can showcase them in this beautiful way. They can reach a younger generation. They can be more relevant on social media because people on Airbnb are more likely to share on social media because they're younger and they're more on social media. And so there's just a, I think it's kind of a win-win for the independents and boutiques. And I think this is a great outlet for them. And I do think the independents and boutiques, a lot of them really do fit the brand values of Airbnb. These are people that care about hospitality. They care about design. They have very affordable places to stay. These are the characteristics of a great Airbnb.