Airbnb will offer 'Adventures' that include rafting in the Yukon or orca-spotting in B.C.
The home-sharing app Airbnb is creating a brand-new travel experience, adding “Airbnb Adventures” to their offerings. These adventures are multi-day, hosted trips that can be added on to an existing vacation or booked independently.
Airbnb boats over 200 ventures spread across six continents. There are many excursions already in Canada, including a 10-day hiking and rafting trip in Whitehorse, Yukon that runs $6,292 a person, and an orca-spotting ‘glamping’ excursion along the Campbell River in British Columbia.
There are plenty of other international adventures, such as a three-day paranormal tour from Cedar City, Utah to Nevada that stops at ghost towns, abandoned mines, and even the infamous Area 51. Another adventure takes you to Norrkoping, Sweden, a four-day trip where visitors can forage for lunch one day and feast with fishermen the next.
Prices for these Adventures can start as low as $89 for a camping trip or around $6,000 for a 10-day hiking trek. These adventures will be like their ‘Experiences’ platform.
“Our vision is to become the end-to-end travel platform. Provide all parts of the trip,” said Joe Zadeh, Airbnb’s vice-president of Experiences. “Where you stay, what you do. In some ways Adventures is just an acceleration of that long-term vision.”
Many of the initial Adventure offerings fit easily into weekend plans, making these trips attractive to staycationers.
“Maybe an Adventure extending to something really much longer, maybe even crossing multiple countries or even continents,” said Zadeh “What we really care about is that you have deeper access that you can’t have anywhere else and you’re really connecting with the host.”
Adventure Hosts can be knowledgeable people turned entrepreneurs or small, local businesses that have partnered with Airbnb. The company says it vets all hosts for quality.
As for Airbnb’s Canadian plans: “We see ourselves moving further east for the rest of the year and into next year. I believe Canada has so much amazing nature and off-the-beaten path stuff to offer that I think it’s going to be a very big country for Adventures.”