Airbnb has teased its plans to build its own AI travel agent before, but on Thursday the company announced that the new AI feature will launch in the first half of 2027. In the company’s Q3 shareholder letter on Thursday, Airbnb also provided more detail about how the agent will work, what it will actually do, and how it’s different from a typical AI chatbot.
In prior interviews, CEO Brian Chesky sketched out the travel company’s approach to AI, describing a plan to build an AI agent that has a richer interface than a conventional chatbot. He also expressed his opinions about how chatbots aren’t the right interface for travel, noting that people take pleasure in the planning process and in anticipating a trip. Any agent that it built, then, shouldn’t take away from the inspiration and the browsing, he told TechCrunch in an interview last month.
