Airbnb mobile client, found some new interesting gadgets

If you're in San Francisco and you've opened the Airbnb mobile client just after the Thursday, you'll find something new: The company is now recommending a house-centered neighborhood tour, in addition to providing you with a short rental source. This means that Airbnb is trying to become a lodging-centred tourist service provider.

In Thursday, Airbnb software engineer Surabi Gupta at a headquarters meeting, said: "Online destinations around the recommended, but Airbnb into a broader sense of the ' Tourism discovery ' first step." Our goal is to help users solve the problem of tourism destination selection and travel planning. ”

I think this passage of Gupta can be so understood: accommodation is a very central part of tourism, but not the user's decision upstream. Only by integrating the destination resources into the accommodation experience can we help the user decide where to play and what to play and then talk about the lodging problem, which is the Airbnb attempt to open the scene.

Does the same trend exist at home? There are, three examples:

One, do the Hotel Ctrip, last year to acquire "Cicada travels." Travel application of the use of the scene has been from the "after" infiltration to "swim before." Other people's UGC travel experience is the basis of your decision to travel destinations and travel plans. Hotel is not the user's decision-making entrance, all kinds of raiders, travel notes, Guide is, so the cicada travels, bread travel has been the giant fancy, so Airbnb to do site recommendations.

Second, art Dragon and the same way to reach strategic cooperation, integration of air tickets, hotel, ticket business, while the same process also announced the establishment of a dedicated destination department, to integrate local tourism resources. In addition to coping with competition, the Arts Dragon and the movement of the same course also want to "machine + Wine + attractions" (and can be expected, there will be a "+ Destination service") packaged as a one-stop service, and eventually become a super travel agency. The information disclosed here is two points: 1, one of the major limitations of tourism services alone, to do is to make a closed loop (when talking to friends from the world, they are also this view). Similarly, Airbnb can not confine himself to short term booking. 2, the destination resource integration is a variety of previous Ota missing things (or, mainly all kinds of landing agencies do things), now began to be OTA attention. And Airbnb is actually in the destination play resources to stay as the core to do integration.

Third, in my contact with the domestic start-up companies, some are trying to stay as the core of the tourism market cut. Holiday Tour is a more special form of tourism, play a radius of more rely on the hotel to expand, not too strong travel planning. Therefore, vacation users will be "Hotel + hotel surrounding resources" as a whole to consider, and compared to the strong planning of the viewing tour, the holiday tour will produce a lot of landing only to make a temporary purchase decision-These two points are in line with Airbnb itself and Airbnb is trying to, visual I big " Airbnb travel agency, the early days should also focus on cutting the holiday market.

I think the current Airbnb can be summed up as "hotel" + "travel agent", this has just melted 450 million U.S. dollars, silver ammunition sufficient start-up companies, we guess how it will go next?