Airbnb Eyes Flights as Alexa and Policy Reshape Travel

On Monday’s Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast, Wil Slickers, Michael Goldin, Brandreth Canaley, and Jamie Lane break down Airbnb’s next big move and what it means for control of the traveler journey.

With Airbnb exploring how flights could fit into its expansion strategy, the conversation centers on whether the company can truly evolve into a full end-to-end travel platform and what that would mean for OTAs and distribution.

They also dig into how Amazon’s Alexa Plus is pushing further into travel planning and booking, raising new questions for short-term rental operators around guest privacy, in-stay marketing, and who owns the guest relationship inside the home.

The team touches on new U.S. travel restrictions that could add friction to international demand, as the episode zooms out on how platform ambition, AI interfaces, and government policy are all reshaping who ultimately owns the traveler.

This episode is brought to you by Vrbo.

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Good morning.

Happy Monday.

Oh, I think you’re muted, Michael.

How did that happen?

Now you’re back, now you’re back.

Say it again, say it again.

The best day of the week.

Real Monday move to have, I feel like we are just like plagued by a running trail of technical issues. It’s like our internet knows it’s Monday. But how were your weekends?

Did you guys do anything fun?

We did several Easter egg hunts and then church, and had family over in the afternoon. A full on family holiday weekend over here at the Golden House. Beautiful.

How many Easter egg hunts did you do?

Because I think we did four.

Three, I think. Yeah.

It was a lot.

Lots of eggs around the house.

Yeah.

Lots of eggs around the house, Brandi.

Yeah. I just did it for myself. I just filled a bunch of eggs with candy.

Hey, the Easter bunny goes to everybody.

Yeah.

I had a nice Easter dinner, but didn’t know egg hunts. I did hear from a bunch of friend chats that whose kids are all in them, that was the activity of the weekend, obviously. I had no plans.

It was really fantastic. That’s like a real rare scenario for me.

It’s the off weekend of Brandy’s travels for those loyal listeners. She’s vowed to only travel every other weekend.

Yes, but I was in Sarasota last week visiting the Prime team down there. It was so nice to be in the sun and see the team down there. I don’t know if I have one consecutive week without travel in the next couple months.

Yeah, surprisingly, in April, I’m on the road every week.

So we’ll have some stuff to talk about.

We will. We will. But before we jump in, we have a special sponsor this month in April, our favorite, Vrbo.

Vrbo has been a long time leader in vacation rental industry. Everybody knows that helping travelers find the perfect whole home for their stays and usually always a host favorite helping give hosts a lot of tools to succeed.

So we’re super excited to have them supporting us all month long. And so speaking of, well, kind of the opposite of support. Not my best segue.

But Jamie, there’s a lot of chatter around travel restrictions.

Yeah.

Do you want to tell us what’s going on there?

Yeah. So our friend Bailey Schultz at Skift had this great article that came out. On Friday, titled Social Media Vetting, $200, $250 entry fees, Where US Travel Restrictions Stand.

And essentially, it’s a rundown of like everything that we were worried about at the end of last year that got implemented mostly in the course of the Big Beautiful Bill. And most of it isn’t being enforced.

And I think the implicit hope in the article, and right now all we have is hope, right? Is that none of this stuff is gonna start being implemented before the start of summer travel. As if you think the, I mean, travelers already have a visa fee.

It’s pretty expensive. And so now the extra integrity fee would add $250 per person. So it doesn’t apply to a lot of the major Western European countries or Japan or, and some of the richer countries.

But you think, like, I’ve got some friends in Brazil. For them to bring a family of four to the US this summer to watch the World Cup, it’s $1,000 just in integrity fees on top of everything else.

So, like, this could have, like, once it’s implemented, a significant impact on international travel.

And we’re finally starting to work through some of the visa backlogs that have sort of plagued travelers wanting to come to the US., and if you talk to any international travelers right now, they’re all worried about the social media vetting, like

having to hand over your phone and the border control officer sort of scroll through and figure out what you’ve been posting recently. These are all things that I definitely don’t scream like, please come visit the US.

And as I said, the biggest hope right now is that they’re going through rules, they’re going through vetting, and that they just die in the vine and don’t actually get implemented.

I think there’s this, I mean, there are a lot of other countries in the world, and if I certainly would not travel somewhere to hand over my social media.

So I think we have these big events that are happening and that attract people who come hell or high water are going to pay $4,000 a night to stay at a Spring Hill in New Jersey to watch their team play.

But when we don’t have those kind of events, it’s like, do we want to pay $1,000 just to get the visa and then have to hand over all this information, which is super invasive and very subjective, or do we want to take our money to Canada?

Yeah, on the affordability piece, it’s definitely a huge hit. And I saw an article, maybe on ESPN, that parking passes for the LA World Cup games are more expensive than the next World Cup tickets. So just parking are more expensive than the tickets.

Yeah, that’s insane.

Affordability is wild.

On the visa thing, we’re not the only one doing this. I just booked a flight to the UK. And for the first time in my life, I had to pay, I don’t know, 25 bucks, nothing in comparison to 250, but I’m having to pay just to enter the country.

And, you know, does this, how does this look long-term, not just for the US, but all of international travel? Does everyone just put up a wall and start charging more fees?

And then, you know, the K-shaped only takes off further because to your point, Jamie, a family of four that makes a good living in Colombia or Brazil or Argentina is now, you know, going to be stuck with another thousand bucks of entry fees alone.

So with the UK one, it looks like that visa, I can go in and out for the next year and a half or two years without having to pay it again. Jamie, is that the case with ours?

So this is in addition to, so we already charge a visa fee. So what you’re paying to get into the UK is a visa fee. And that the UK put on is reciprocal because the US was now charging a visa fee for UK travellers.

So that I can get, I don’t love, I can get behind though, but that visa does last for, I think what you said up to like two years or one and a half years. So this is, so travellers are already having to pay a visa fee. This is on top of the visa fee.

And just to make it that much harder to get in to the US.

We’ve talked about this in different ways, like on the state level too, when there’s or county level, when we pass these restrictions that make, that like really hamper on the travel industry.

And again, it’s like, this is such an enormous part of our economy. We are like, just actively like shooting it in the face at every turn. And it’s somehow the travel industry continues to like slog through.

But like, it’s just like, it can’t be resilient forever. And when you have so many other headwinds, like, I mean, I don’t know. It’s just gonna be, I think, one of those things you look back on is like, why?

I nominate Jamie Lane for Ministry of Tourism.

Yeah.

Ministry of Tourism Czar, as we call it.

Yeah, I think, I don’t think any of this stuff is gonna be permanent. I think this is just a cycle. The $25 visa fee, maybe, $250 social media check, I think it’s probably more there to scare than to actually do anything.

And maybe have people that would have suspect pasts be scared to do it. But for the rest of us, it is certainly an infringement of, I’d say rights, but it’s probably the wrong term in this case. We’ll see where this goes.

My guess is it’s not gonna stick around for long if it even gets fully rolled out and adopted.

All right.

10:07

Alexa Books Travel

Well, let’s say you actually want to plan your American trip. Are you going to use Alexa to do so?

Because that is like your flight on Airbnb.

Yeah, because that’s obviously, we’ve made it nine minutes and 47 seconds. So now I’m going to say the magic letters, AI, too early, too early.

But there’s been a lot of talk about different AI tools and travel and how that’s going to be changing our whole industry, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the next one is Alexa, Alexa Plus and I hope that someone has their Alexa turned on.

Alexa, book a four-night stay at Amonzo for Brandy. First class tickets because that’s just okay. The article talks about how Amazon is really releasing this next product to book the whole travel end-to-end on Alexa.

I have opinions, but I would love to hear from you guys first.

I didn’t know Alexa could do anything besides play Baby Shark.

Yeah, there are other features.

This is a revelation for me, first and foremost. Secondly, call me crazy, but I tend to book travel more with my eyes than with my mouth. I just don’t see how this can gain traction.

Let me start with, I’ll raise my hand and say, I admit I’m a millennial.

I was born in 85. I don’t feel comfortable booking flights on my phone. When I’m going and doing big trips, I pull out my laptop.

I’m not even that bad.

I’ll book a flight from my phone for sure.

No, I book all my travel.

I’d say international trips. If I’m just doing a flight up to New York or something, I can do that for my phone. But if I’m going out and planning a trip, I’m pulling out the laptop.

That’s where I see one, the next generation is going to feel way more comfortable with this, maybe than others. My boomer mom, I don’t think would ever do that.

But what I would say is there are the simple trips, like maybe that trip to New York where there’s one flight every hour, there’s no difference in flight costs. I need to go out to Denver, up to New York. I know the exact time I’m leaving.

I know the flight. Just go ahead and book it for me. You’re connected to all my things.

Let’s do it.

Comment of the week, Paul.

Yeah. Paul just has a bunch of emojis to Baby Shark. Great work.

I was at a friend’s house this weekend and he was like, do you know the whisper function? I was like that and he’s like, you can ask Alexa, tell me the time. He did that and she whispered back, I don’t know how to help you with that.

Then he’s like, Alexa, what time is it? She’s like, I don’t know how to help you with that. Something obviously needed to be reset.

But I was like, if there are little glitches with tell me what the time is, how on earth is this system going to be like, yeah, Alexa, book me this trip. I really hope this is dry.

I hope someone’s listening to this on speakers and that their Alexa’s are going off. But Alexa, book my trip to Bangkok. Also, when you have a whole list of flights, I can’t get my head around how this works practically.

Why double down on this?

I’ll jump it one step further and say, maybe if I can say, Alexa, connect me with Delta, Delta, I want to fly in two weeks to this place. Give me a couple options.

Like if I’m talking with Delta directly and not Alexa to AI Search to, you know, some other intermediary platform to end booking, maybe.

But, you know, I think back to my childhood and listening to my dad book a flight from a phone call and they’re going through the options. Well, what time? Oh, that’s too late.

What is there an earlier one? Is there a later one? And the back and forth, you know, just takes more time than if you just pull up a screen.

So I don’t know. Maybe I’m maybe I’m millennial just like you, Jamie. But I do prefer to see them on a screen.

I on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be a computer. A cell phone is just fine for me.

Well we’ll see. I mean, Amazon is trying. They talk about all the different opportunities for upsells and all of this.

I don’t see how anyone is going. Like would you have a book at home without seeing it? And then so what you have to have like, it’s going to send the link to your phone or to your computer.

Like I just, it’s making something way more convoluted than I think it needs to be.

Yeah. Alexa can tell me the weather, play a song or two, tell me some terrible jokes, set a timer, but I don’t know. Anything beyond that is beyond me at this point.

Yeah.

On the other hand, AI is a lot more important and relevant, but you get a visual aspect to it, so.

Yeah.

I built some really fun diagrams with Claude this weekend.

Claude and Brandy, getting nerdy over here.

Oh yeah. Really in it, really in it. But yeah, I guess we’ll see.

We’ll see what Amazon does. I feel like they are, obviously Amazon is a leader in so many different functions, but I feel like when the AI game that people are using on a regular basis, they’re not really top of the pack right now.

Well, in terms of top of the pack on where you would book flights, would Airbnb be the top of the pack for an interview?

16:23

Airbnb Flight Plans

Would any of you think to look at Airbnb first for your next flight decision?

No. I mean, I don’t even look at any OTAs though. Like I use Google Flights and then I go book direct.

So I don’t know, I’ve never booked, I don’t think I’ve ever booked a flight using booking, maybe Expedia a handful of times, but I don’t know.

It doesn’t apply to me because everyone knows I’m a Delta Loyalist. But Jamie, you’re out of Atlanta too, probably also a Delta Loyalist.

Yeah, but I also see most of my friends and family are not Loyalists. They’re using the OTAs to book flights. So as Airbnb has announced that they’re and maybe even not even announced, they said they’re looking at getting into flights.

They’ve been looking at getting into the flights since, what, 2018, 2019. And this to me, and this was from an interview that Dennis did with Dave Stevenson at Airbnb, their chief, I think he’s what, chief business owner now, leading strategy.

This to me is them and going full court press into competing with Expedia and booking. Booking has been trying to build the connected trip now for, what, 10 years with varying levels of success.

So is Airbnb going to earn a whole lot of revenue from this? Like, absolutely not.

Like, none of the OTAs earn significant revenue off flights, but it can be an important point of, usually, the flight is, if not, along with lodging, the biggest point of revenue, it’s where you start your travel, or a lot of people start with the

flight. If you can get people using your OTA to start with the flight, then you have a much higher likelihood of getting them to then book the lodging and then book the car and then book the experiences and have them all stay within your ecosystem.

So, and essentially Airbnb’s got three out of four with your car transfer, your experiences and your lodging, like might as well add the fourth and at least have the opportunity to win the connected trip race.

I’ve got a lot to say on this one.

Michael takes a deep breath.

So, the ethos of Brian gets completely broken by flights. The individual host that he’s fought so hard for and he’s done a really, really good job of protecting, it gets just chipped away at little by little.

Now the push into hotels, particularly independent hotels, makes a ton of sense. People travel for different reasons. You know, you want to capture the business traveler when they’re not with their family and vice versa.

But just to jump to flights, I think is the biggest and probably worst reach that Airbnb can do.

Before you even get successful at any of the other ones that Jamie just listed off, go get successful at services, go get successful at hotels, and then look for the connected trip.

But you’re very far away from that, so you can’t be everything to everybody, and you’re not going to be this connected trip.

I would advise you, Brian, and the rest of the team, focus on what’s made you you and the brand that you’ve built versus trying to jump into flights and just tick the box to try and trade like an OTA.

The thing is, I kind of think that flights will be more successful than experiences or services or whatever.

Like, that’s something that I think is so a part of every trip, almost every trip unless you’re driving, like you’re getting there somehow, you know? And that I would, I would probably be more inclined to use.

And then you have your whole itinerary all like together and it looks nice. I would be, and then your host could like automatically have your flight details, like when you’re going to get in.

I can see a lot of like connections there, like helping you like upselling early check-ins or late checkouts when you know that their flight is going to get in early or late or whatever.

I do agree though that like they’re taking on all of these different, you know, verticals without really fully executing on any of them, like the hotels and other like just like what is happening there.

So, but I also think that they, there’s this view that like if they don’t add all of these things that Booking and Expedia have, that they’re not going to win the race. So, I think there’s just this, that’s what this seems like to me. Jamie.

I’ll just say, and we’ve talked about this in the past.

They are grasping for growth at this point, right? Of what is going to hit. You’ve got to have a lot of fires, irons in the fire, as they say.

And hopefully, one of them will catch, and one of them will be one of those things that can drive this next level of growth that they need.

And also, just because something doesn’t necessarily work in the US., they are one of those companies that, and it could take fire in Latin America, or they could be the next new flight booking platform in APAC, in Japan, in Korea, in Australia.

They are doing their airport transfers, I think this initial launch is all in Europe right now, where there is more of this, a lot of airports that are sort of disconnected from the central part of town and people needing to get in.

And once you get in, you don’t need a car, but you do need that initial sort of transfer, where in the US it’s like, ah, I’m gonna rent a car anyway, why do I need this transfer thing?

So, while I don’t love it as a strategy, I’ll agree, I mostly agree with you, Michael. Like, I don’t see this being their next big thing. I do see it as something that’s probably worth testing.

And if they can, and what I like is it doesn’t say that they’re gonna try to build this from scratch. Like, I suspect that they’re going to…

A sky scanner.

There’s lots of ways to bring in flights through B2B. And hopefully they go and partner with someone that’s already doing this.

Expedia’s got a great B2B program, it’s really successful. Pipe it through to Airbnb, let’s see how this goes.

I think, wait, sorry, just on the sky scanner thing, like that was the best part about sky scanner in Europe, was like, you’re like, I just want to go anywhere and it would show you.

So if you could do that with Airbnb, and then it would also pick like the homes, like you could also do that search with like the homes function, like I want to go anywhere for this price, and then it would pair your flights. Oh my God.

Well, college brandy would freak out over that.

Brandy, they invested $200 million several years ago for AI, and have yet to roll out anything substantial there. So it could be a travel roulette.

Take me somewhere. Take me somewhere.

My budget is $2,000. I need flights and accommodations. Go.

Honestly, it’s kind of fun.

So we chatted briefly on this before we went live.

Nobody books all of their travel at once. And this is why the connected trip at booking has never really taken off.

And if Airbnb is pushing that direction, you know, unless, in Europe, it’s pretty common to book everything at once with TUI or some travel operator. I don’t even know if they’re still around, but old school.

You get your flight, you fly on a TUI flight to a TUI resort, it’s all inclusive, and it’s done. Here’s your dates, show up and drop off. But that’s just not really how, at least, Americans travel.

And I can’t imagine personally sitting down and booking my flight or my trip end to end. Now maybe they have some way of cadencing it and trying to keep drawing you in with discounts. I have seen a number of discounts come through Airbnb lately.

So they are pushing into the discounting game with travelers and with hosts. So that’s an interesting update. But I just don’t really believe in the full connected trip either.

Yeah, because you can just, I mean, especially now with so many tools and like whatever AI bot you’ve become friends with, like you can create your own itinerary, your own connected trip, like these, there’s all these conversations floating around

about like, we talked about this last week, like the Claude killer, like what business, like how quickly is AI basically going to kill it and how you can create this app. But like, you can just recreate the connected trip on your own.

Like that seems so easy. And so, you know, you’re not going to need, I think this would be like a warning signal for Airbnb if booking was spending the better part of a decade trying to get people to do it and it didn’t work.

Like, is that like really like, are you like, no, we’re going to do it differently.

Wait, are you pitching an idea now, Brandy? You’re going to create an AI travel planner that sort of brings together all your trips and predicting a Vitor acquisition, a Skyscanner acquisition and what else is available?

TripAdvisor.

Yeah, I mean, it’s just I think that this is a part of the AI conversation is like making a lot of these things that these companies are investing in that will be obsolete and maybe there’s like a certain segment of traveler that it will obviously

Yeah, well not bullish on Airbnb flights, not bullish on Alexa booking travel and not bullish on international travel coming to America.

27:34

UAE Tourism Aid

This is a very bearish episode.

Let me end with a happy note or at least a positive note. So, this wasn’t on the docket, but it was a story I saw this morning on Skift.

And it was essentially the UAE government preparing a big support package for the travel sector in the UAE and Dubai that is just still being hammered because of the war with US, Israel and Iran. So, war is still going on.

I don’t think and markets are feeling great that it’s going to be resolved anytime soon. And you look at performance and we see it in their DNA data.

STR created a great graph where they compared occupancy in UAE at the start of COVID and occupancy in UAE now with the war in Iran. And they are collapsing at very similar rates, which is really depressing to see.

We all saw the impact that COVID had. And essentially, they are having a second COVID right now in terms of just people not traveling to the UAE, canceling everything.

And that government has come out this morning and saying that they are preparing a pretty significant sort of rescue package for the travel and tourism industry.

And we saw it went right when the war started, that they were essentially paying for guests to stay in hotels.

And now that they’re looking, it looks like they’re going to prepare even bigger package to make sure the tourism industry can make it through this low point, which is an incredible that they’re able to do.

I mean, it’s a much smaller industry than the US and Europe, but something that the government looks like they can support for at least a bit.

Yeah, I mean, that they put so much money into their tourism infrastructure, like so, like, it’s just, it’s good to see that they’re going to do something to support it.

But it’s I mean, the COVID collapse, anyone listening to this, it’s an operator in this industry knows what that felt like at that time.

So just like, I think we can all feel a little bit of empathy to another, you know, group that’s going through a similar kind of like just immediate collapse of your implosion, of your of your industry is not fun, but good to see there’s some support

coming for them, which hopefully this won’t last forever and they won’t bounce right back. Well, thanks everybody for tuning in, especially Paul coming in with great comments today.

We love seeing you on the show every Monday and make sure to check out the Vrbo link in our, on the screen and in the show notes. We are so happy to have them sponsor us this month. We are good friends with our team over at Vrbo.

So hope everyone has a great week and we will see you all next Monday.