Airbnb Experiments With Instacart Grocery Deliveries to Guests

Airbnb is reportedly testing a service that lets guests order groceries from Instacart.

The house-sharing company will offer “kitchen stocking” as part of a three-month pilot program starting Jan. 5, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (Nov. 12), citing an email sent to some Airbnb hosts.

During this period, Airbnb will pay hosts $25 for every completed order — as well as a $100 bonus for their first order — if they receive guests’ preorders and stock their kitchens before they check in.

The program is open to select hosts with available listings in Phoenix, Orlando and Los Angeles, the report added. Guests will be allowed to place an Instacart order within the Airbnb app up to three weeks before their stay, an Instacart spokesperson told Bloomberg.

The report also cited a comment from an Airbnb spokesperson that the company is “regularly testing new product updates, categories and initiatives, in order to provide the best possible experience for our community.”

As Bloomberg noted, integration with Airbnb marks the latest “embedded partnership” that Instacart has launched in recent weeks, as the company looks to boost orders and strengthen customer loyalty in the face of growing competition from DoorDash and Uber.

For example, the company recently teamed with Grubhub, letting that platform’s customers order goods from Instacart’s network of grocery stores and pharmacies within the Grubhub app or website.

The partnership is also happening at a time when the “appetite for digital grocery shopping continues to grow,” as PYMNTS wrote earlier this week after Instacart reported earnings for the third quarter of the year.

Those results showed strong gains in orders and transaction volumes, underlining the durability of its delivery model and its changing role as a technology partner for the grocery sector.

The company’s orders rose 14% year over year to 83.4 million, while gross transaction value (GTV) increased 10% to $9.2 billion, Instacart said in a letter to shareholders. Revenue came to $939 million, slightly above Wall Street forecasts, as Instacart’s core marketplace continued to draw more frequent and bigger baskets from returning shoppers.

Instacart CEO Chris Rogers said in the letter that the company’s scale and technology investments are reinforcing its position as a “technology and enablement partner for the grocery industry,” extending beyond delivery.

Rogers told analysts during a conference call that consumer demand was still resilient, with Instacart enticing new shoppers while retaining existing customers at higher rates.