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Airbnb Moves to Revive Luxe Program for High-End Homes
Airbnb plans to restart a luxury accommodations push that the pandemic halted in 2020, with CEO Brian Chesky telling hosts at an invitation-only summit in San Francisco that the company intends to rebuild and grow the program.
Chesky outlined the plans at Airbnb's second annual host summit last month, an invitation-only gathering in San Francisco, according to property managers who were in the room. He said the company is rebuilding its Luxe offering and wants to expand it.
The original Luxe program debuted in June 2019, aimed at high-end homes, but was cut short the following year when the pandemic froze global travel. A restart would revive an initiative that never reached full scale.
Luxury is not the only shelved effort back on the table. Airbnb has widened its hotels and experiences businesses, and executives have said repeatedly that the company will eventually launch flights.
No timeline, target markets or listing criteria for the revived luxury program were disclosed. The company has not publicly confirmed the plans.
The summit was the second of its kind for hosts, positioning the luxury relaunch as part of a broader effort to rebuild product lines that were dropped when travel demand collapsed in 2020.