Reported by TechCrunch AI
Airbnb has teased its plans to build its own AI travel agent before, but on Thursday the company announced that the new AI feature will launch in the first half of 2027. In the company’s Q3 shareholder letter on Thursday , Airbnb also provided more detail about how the agent will work, what it will actually do, and how it’s different from a typical AI chatbot.
In prior interviews, CEO Brian Chesky sketched out the travel company’s approach to AI, describing a plan to build an AI agent that has a richer interface than a conventional chatbot. He also expressed his opinions about how chatbots aren’t the right interface for travel, noting that people take pleasure in the planning process and in anticipating a trip. Any agent that it built, then, shouldn’t take away from the inspiration and the browsing, he told TechCrunch in an interview last month.
Chesky today reiterated that belief, telling analysts on the earnings call that people won’t use one AI agent for everything.
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“Today’s AI agents like Muse and Instinct are good at simple routine tasks like making a restaurant reservation or scheduling an appointment. But planning a trip is different,” he said. “Travel is aspirational. Discovering where to go and where to stay is part of the experience. In fact, 80% of travelers say they enjoy spending time researching trips. People want to look at photos. They want to compare homes. They want to make decisions with people they’re traveling with,” he continued. “And I don’t think the general-purpose agents are the best to do that. So that is why we are building our own AI agent,” Chesky said.
Airbnb described its agent as having a personalized interface that’s designed specifically for travel, where it will “build an interface” around a user’s question instead of simply responding as a chatbot would.
“What we are doing is developing a custom-designed AI-native experience that responds to what guests are looking for,” Chesky said. “So instead of relying on traditional chat alone, which is very text-heavy—which, again, is definitely not the way you should plan travel, our…