Airbnb Updates: Changes and Improvements

Airbnb started out as an easy way to find housing in far-off places, or not so far, depending how you look at it. You could also use it to window shop gorgeous places to stay in exotic locations. Dream big, right? Well, over the last year it upgraded its understanding of living like a local to include not only local places to stay, but local experiences, with guides and restaurant reservations to boot.

In an attempt to go against the grain of mass-produced tourism, Airbnb looks to customize your travel experience by giving you a variety of tools and a marketplace with local expertise. The new app has various ways of customizing your experience from hosts that might suite you best to guidebooks contributed by local hosts so you can get a sense of where to eat and what to do from people who live there. There is a selection of restaurants that allow you to book through Airbnb so you don’t have to mess with a separate website.

Many of these updates are based on surveys Airbnb conducted. These revealed the anxieties of people who like to travel. These anxieties included having to wait in lines at tourist attractions and they found many people feel more stressed and tired after returning from a vacation. What does this mean? Should we just stay home? Or should we, as Airbnb suggests, stay in someone else’s home? If you are someone who finds traveling more of a pain than an escape, these curated experiences might be just the ticket.