Airbnb’s “midlife crisis” is not primarily a financial emergency. It is a strategic identity crisis: the company has built a highly profitable home-rental marketplace, but CEO Brian Chesky believes Airbnb risks becoming an app many people use only a few times a year. Its response, launched on May 13, 2025, was to expand into services, experiences, and a redesigned travel-planning app.
The strategy could increase customer frequency and spending per trip. But listing massages, chefs, beauty services, and local activities is much easier than reliably delivering them. Airbnb’s reinvention will succeed only if it can extend its existing trust, payments, and reputation systems into categories with very different safety, regulatory, and quality-control requirements.
What Airbnb’s “midlife crisis” really means
“Midlife crisis” is an editorial metaphor, not evidence that Airbnb is collapsing. The company’s core lodging marketplace was profitable and well established by 2025. The concern was that its success had also created a ceiling: customers typically open Airbnb when they need accommodation for a trip, rather than as a frequent-use app.
That creates a strategic problem. A customer might book one or two homes a year, then disappear between trips. Airbnb wants more opportunities to participate in the same customer’s travel spending—and eventually to become useful outside overnight stays altogether.
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WIRED reported that Airbnb’s initial reinvention involved more than $200 million in spending, more than 10,000 service vendors, and a rollout spanning 260 cities and 30 countries. Those figures describe the scale of the plan, not proof that the new businesses had already achieved product-market fit. WIRED’s reporting and Airbnb’s launch announcement should be read as separate sources: one describes the strategy and ambitions, while the other details the products Airbnb said it had launched.
What Airbnb actually launched
Airbnb Services
Airbnb Services introduced hospitality-adjacent offerings including:
- Chefs and prepared meals
- Photography
- Massage and spa treatments
- Personal training
- Hair, makeup, and nails
- Catering
Airbnb said Services launched across 10 categories in 260 cities. It also said many listings had entry offerings below $50. That is an entry-price signal, not a typical total booking cost or a universal rate card; prices, availability, taxes, travel fees, and add-ons vary by listing and location.
The company said service providers were evaluated for expertise and reputation, completed identity verification, and submitted relevant licenses or certifications where required. That qualification matters. Identity verification establishes who a provider is; it does not automatically establish professional competence, insurance coverage, regulatory compliance, or suitability for a particular customer.
Airbnb Experiences
Experiences were relaunched across 650 cities. Categories included cultural and landmark activities, food tours, cooking classes, outdoor and water activities, wildlife, art and shopping, fitness and wellness, and celebrity- or athlete-hosted “Airbnb Originals.”
Airbnb said experience hosts would be assessed for expertise, reputation, local connection, authenticity, and guest feedback. Celebrity events may generate attention and downloads, but they should not be treated as representative evidence that ordinary local experiences can achieve the same demand or economics.
A redesigned app
The new app combined homes, Services, and Experiences in one interface:
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- Height: 4in / 10cm
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- Explore: homes, services, and experiences
- Trips: itineraries and booking details
- Messages: communication, photo and video sharing, and payment features for service customization
- Profile: travel history, social connections, and identity-verification information
Airbnb also described host tools for homes, services, and experiences. Availability is not universal: the company specifically noted that Services were unavailable in some locations, including Brazil and Puerto Rico.
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The logic is straightforward: Airbnb already has a large audience, a recognizable brand, search and discovery tools, payments, reviews, messaging, identity verification, and experience handling marketplace disputes. If those systems work for accommodation, the company believes they might support additional transactions.
Services and Experiences could help in three ways:
- Increase trip spending. A traveler who has already booked a home might also pay for a chef, massage, photographer, tour, or cooking class.
- Increase engagement. Local activities and occasional services could give customers reasons to open the app between major trips.
- Strengthen Airbnb’s hospitality proposition. Services can provide some hotel-like amenities while preserving the space and residential feel associated with a home rental.
Airbnb reported more than 5.5 million hosts, more than 2.5 billion guest arrivals, and more than 200 million guests and hosts who had completed identity verification. These are company-reported figures from its May 2025 announcement, not independent measures of the new businesses’ success.
The biggest problem: trust does not transfer automatically
Booking a home and booking a massage are different marketplace problems. A home listing requires accurate photos, availability, cleanliness, payment, cancellation handling, and safety systems. A massage, meal, beauty treatment, or personal-training session adds professional qualifications, physical safety, food safety, health considerations, insurance, and local licensing.
A provider can be genuine and still deliver a poor or unsafe service. Potential failures include:
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- A food provider causing an allergic reaction
- A guest being injured during a fitness or outdoor activity
- A treatment being performed by someone without the required qualifications
- A provider failing to arrive at a scheduled time
- A service damaging an Airbnb property or violating building rules
- A customer or provider disputing what was promised or delivered
Airbnb must also make clear which protections apply to Services and Experiences. Customers should not assume that protections associated with accommodation automatically cover every service, activity, injury, cancellation, or property-damage scenario.
Why the old Experiences experiment matters
Airbnb first introduced Experiences around 2016. Chesky told WIRED that the earlier effort was launched at the wrong time: Airbnb promoted it heavily at first, but did not sustain marketing, did not add enough new supply, and had a smaller customer base.
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That is management’s retrospective explanation, not an independently established diagnosis. Other explanations remain plausible:
- Local activities can be difficult to search and compare.
- Schedules and capacity are less standardized than hotel or home availability.
- Quality can vary sharply between providers.
- Customers may not book often enough to support repeat use.
- Specialized activity and ticketing platforms already have strong demand and supply.
- Margins may be unattractive after support, refunds, insurance, and payment costs.
The relaunch addresses some weaknesses with a larger user base, more supply, more promotion, and high-profile Originals. It does not automatically solve the underlying difficulty of making local activities liquid, reliable, and repeatable.
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Airbnb’s possible competitive advantage
Airbnb does not need to be the best specialist in every category to benefit from expansion. It may have an advantage when a customer is already planning a trip and wants one place to manage lodging, activities, and add-on services.
The potential advantages are:
- An installed base of travelers and hosts
- Existing reviews, payments, messaging, and booking infrastructure
- A recognized consumer brand
- Ability to attach services and activities to an existing itinerary
- Experience resolving marketplace disputes
- Potentially useful identity and reputation information
But this is an advantage in distribution, not proof of category expertise. A platform that helps customers discover providers must still demonstrate that its recommendations are accurate, its supply is available, and its protections are appropriate.
The “everything app” ambition is much larger than the launch
The most dramatic ideas associated with Chesky’s strategy were not all launched products. WIRED reported ambitions involving broader local services, social connections, an AI concierge, and Airbnb profiles that might function like a portable identity or passport.
Those concepts should be separated from the May 2025 product release:
- Launched: homes, Services, Experiences, and the redesigned app.
- Announced or planned: broader categories, expanded social features, and future app capabilities.
- Speculative: a universal identity credential, a general-purpose social network, or an AI agent that plans a person’s life.
An Airbnb profile is not a government-recognized passport. Identity verification is not the same as professional licensing. An AI concierge that handles customer service is not automatically an autonomous life-planning assistant.
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The credible thesis is narrower: Airbnb wants to become a broader hospitality and local-discovery platform, increasing frequency and revenue per user. Calling it the next Amazon or a universal “everything app” describes the aspiration more than the demonstrated business.
The Brian Chesky factor
Chesky has become an unusually hands-on product and design leader. His strategic inspirations include Amazon’s move from books into broader commerce and Apple’s combination of technology, design, and emotional appeal.
The pandemic also changed his management philosophy and reinforced a more direct operating style. That approach is often discussed alongside Paul Graham’s “Founder Mode” idea, which argues that founders may need to remain deeply involved rather than managing only through layers of executives. Chesky’s founder-led focus can improve product coherence and speed. It can also concentrate too much strategic authority in one person.
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Who Airbnb is competing with
Airbnb’s proposed categories overlap with specialized platforms and established businesses:
- Viator and GetYourGuide for tours and activities
- ClassPass for fitness and wellness bookings
- Thumbtack for local professionals and home services
- Yelp for local-business discovery and reviews
Airbnb’s proposition is different: combine homes, services, activities, payments, messages, and itineraries in one travel-centered product. But the company is not automatically better merely because it offers more categories. The important question is whether it can provide enough supply, quality, availability, and protection to beat a specialist when the customer needs a specific service.
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A launch in hundreds of cities demonstrates distribution ambition, not sustainable performance. The most revealing metrics would include:
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- ELEGANT DESIGN: Forest green hardcover guest book featuring a golden cabin design, perfect for vacation homes and rental properties
- DIMENSIONS: Convenient 9 inches long by 8 inches high by 1 inch wide size, making it easy to store and display
- VERSATILE USE: Ideal for collecting memories and messages from visitors in cabins, vacation homes, rental properties, and special events
- QUALITY CONSTRUCTION: Hardcover construction ensures durability and protection of cherished guest messages over time
- PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION: Beautifully designed with forest-themed aesthetics that complement cabin and rustic decor settings
- Services and Experiences booking volume
- Repeat purchase rates
- Use of Services by customers who are not booking homes
- The percentage of home bookings that add an activity or service
- Gross booking value and contribution margin
- Cancellation, refund, and no-show rates
- Safety incidents and customer-support costs
- Provider retention and repeat bookings
- Search-to-book conversion
- Supply density and availability in smaller cities
One reported figure deserves particular caution: WIRED attributed a proposed 15 percent fee on future services to Chesky. That should not be treated as a universal confirmed rate for every Service or Experience.
What this means for Airbnb customers and hosts
For customers, the expansion could make trip planning more convenient, especially when lodging, activities, and hospitality services can be coordinated in one place. It also creates a reason to compare Airbnb with specialists rather than assume the integrated option is best.
Before booking a service or experience, check the provider’s current reviews, exact qualifications, cancellation terms, location, total price, age or participation rules, and what protection applies. For food, wellness, fitness, or outdoor activities, do not treat an Airbnb verification badge as a substitute for asking relevant safety questions.
For existing home hosts, the expansion may create opportunities to offer services or experiences, but it may also produce a separate provider ecosystem. There is no guarantee that every home host will benefit, or that a host’s accommodation reputation will transfer to an unrelated professional service.
Verdict: a coherent expansion, but not yet an everything app
Airbnb’s strategy makes sense if the company remains focused on hospitality, trip planning, and local discovery. Services and Experiences can increase the value of an existing booking and potentially give customers reasons to return more often.
The strategy becomes unfocused if Airbnb tries to compete simultaneously with every local-service, social, identity, ticketing, and AI platform. Its core advantage is not that it can list anything. It is that it already has a travel audience and a marketplace infrastructure that might extend naturally into travel-related services.
For now, Airbnb’s “midlife crisis” is best understood as a profitable company searching for its next growth curve. The launch proves Airbnb is willing to spend and experiment. It does not yet prove that customers will use the platform frequently, that providers will stay, or that Airbnb can manage the safety and regulatory complexity of unrelated services.
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