Airbnb CBO: AI Will Enable a ‘Concierge in Your Pocket’

Airbnb is planning to embed artificial intelligence (AI) throughout its operations to transform guest and homeowner experiences, enabling a “concierge in your pocket,” according to its chief business officer.

AI is an “incredibly high priority,” said Airbnb’s Dave Stephenson, at the Human[x] conference in Las Vegas on Monday (March 10). He added that top management recently met to discuss the “critical importance of AI” and its role in the lodging giant’s long-term vision. “It pervades everything we do.”

Airbnb is developing sophisticated AI capabilities to personalize recommendations based on user preferences and behaviors. The company collects data through what it calls “passports,” or user profiles, that help it understand travel context and preferences.

“The more [guests] interact with us, the better we can actually do predicting and matching,” Stephenson said. “The happier they’re going to be, the more likely they are to come back, and the happier the host is going to be, because we end up having the perfect guest for that host. It’s a nice virtuous cycle.”

He said that Airbnb’s massive scale gives it a major advantage in developing these capabilities compared to smaller competitors. “If you’re trying to do this as an incredibly small company with 1, 2, 10, 20 transactions, you’re not going to be able to do this. But when you have the scale of Airbnb, you can actually unlock a lot of potential,” he said.

Stephenson envisions AI becoming a comprehensive “concierge in your pocket” that seamlessly handles all aspects of travel planning.

“You should be able to plan and execute the most seamless trip — from how you’re getting there, where you’re staying, what you’re doing, where you’re eating — end to end. And if you ever have a problem, it’s right there for you … [to] take the challenge and stress of travel out,” he said.

Read more: Seamless Journeys: AI’s Rising Role in Coordinating Consumer Travel

AI Chatbots a ‘Disservice’

With Airbnb’s emphasis on deploying AI, Stephenson was asked why the company doesn’t use an AI chatbot for customer service.

“Over time, we would love to automate it,” he said. But Airbnb is taking a measured approach to prioritize quality responses over speed to market.

When guests contact customer service, that usually means they have a problem. Airbnb wants to solve it quickly, and if automation could do it, that’s fine, Stephenson said. But they still need to have a good user experience.

“We are a design-led company,” Stephenson said. Airbnb CEO and Co-Founder Brian Chesky “is a designer [and] such a perfectionist in the way in which we do the interface with people and Airbnb. We just don’t want you to fall into a death spiral on a computer that you can never get out of.”

Other websites deploy AI chatbots to show they are cutting edge in tech. However, “We just don’t think that [the existing chatbot] interface is doing guests or hosts a service,” he said. “We think it’s actually a disservice.”

Airbnb will take its time to “actually build out what an amazing AI interface might be,” Stephenson added. “You’ll be able to unlock an incredible potential for travel when you do that.”

Read more: Airbnb Overhauls Mobile App to Be ‘Similar to Amazon’

AI Sniffs Out Potential Illegal Parties

AI also is being used to help hosts. Stephenson said Airbnb’s AI systems can identify suspicious booking patterns based on historical data, and it has already prevented about 1.4 million people from booking homes that could be used to hold unauthorized parties. This initiative has cut complaints about parties by more than 50%.

Due to “hundreds of millions of guest arrivals in any given year, we can actually use that data to train the models on where there might be issues, and then use that to prevent parties in the first place,” Stephenson said.