Last week, Airbnb made two major announcements that will surely make the experiences of travellers even more golden.
Launch of an In-app Restaurant Booking
Credit: AirbnbFirst, the leading community-driven hospitality service teamed up with Resy offering the in-app restaurant booking. Users can now book restaurants within the Airbnb app. For now, it curates selected restaurants in 16 US cities. In the near future, this service will eventually expand to more domestic markets and roll out internationally.
Coming up with this idea makes it less frustrating to travelers who likes to explore restaurants when they are in unfamiliar places. With the partnership, this is a huge move for Airbnb’s ongoing effort to go beyond than just offering rental housing or vacation places.
At an event in New York city, Ben Leventhal, co-founder and CEO of Resy said, “The experience of booking accommodations and restaurants shouldn’t be disjointed, and there’s a real opportunity to put those things together. When I go to San Francisco or Nashville or anywhere, the first thing I say is ‘Where am I eating?’”
Using the feature in Airbnb’s website and app, users can go to the ‘Restaurant’s’ tab. They can search by cuisine, dates, time of day and type of meal in a certain neighborhood, wherever they are.
Airbnb Kitchens of Asia Campaign
The second announcement coming from Airbnb is their partnership with Asia Pacific leading chefs to launch Airbnb Kitchens of Asia Campaign.
This campaign emphasizes on trying out locale cuisines on vacation in Asia Pacific countries. Hence, Airbnb teamed-up with 4 high profile chefs: Chef Manish Mehrotra (India), Chef Tony Yoo (South Korea), Chef Ian Kittichai (Thailand), and Chef Koh Kentetsu (Japan). With this movement, it encourages travelers to try and experience distinct flavours of these Asian countries.
Food is one of the most exciting and important part of the travel. In a recent survey by Airbnb, about 71 percent of people including Australians are getting more adventurous in tasting local Asian cuisines.
Findings also reveal that 80 percent of Airbnb listings have kitchen facilities, while 46 percent are reluctant to cook in their accommodation and 41 percent don’t want to spend time on cooking or preparing their meals.
Thus, the chefs along with the Airbnb hosts will share recipes which anyone can recreate with simple ingredients in under thirty minutes. Just like that, no traveler can miss out on trying the best dishes in Asia.
Regional director of Airbnb Asia Pacific, Siew Kum Hong said about the Kitchens of Asia initiative, “Our Survey has shown that people across the region, irrespective of age or gender, have a desire to really experience the places that they travel to, not just visit. Food is such an influence on destination decision-making, and is also one of the easiest ways that you can immerse yourself into a local culture or community whether traveling with your family and friends or alone.”
Airbnb believes in taking over travel experience into greater heights, thus these 2 breakthroughs will surely make any traveler’s experiences worth remembering; from culture, experience and food.