Airbnb is offering its users 10 categories of wellbeing-related experiences across 260 cities via its new in-app feature Airbnb Services.

Recognising that people choose hotels because of the additional services they offer, Airbnb has partnered with a number of Service hosts to provide experiences to app users that can be booked independently of any trip or hotel stay.

The categories for services include:

• Massage (Swedish, deep tissue and reflexology from certified therapists)
• Spa treatments (facials, microdemabrasion, body scrubs and other treatments delivered by licensed practitioners)
• Personal training (yoga, strength training, HIIT – provided by fitness professionals and in some cases world champion athletes)
• Hair (haircuts from experienced stylists)
• Make-up (every-day looks or special occasion make-up by professional make-up artists)
• Nails (manicures and pedicures from experienced nail artists)
• Chefs (fully customisable in-home meals from professional chefs)
• Prepared meals (ready-to-eat meals prepared by professional chefs)
• Catering (full service catering with custom menus, decor and equipment – plus set-up and clean-up)
• Photography (personalised photo sessions from experienced photographers)

Service hosts complete Airbnb’s identity verification process and are vetted for quality. Each host has an average of around 10 years’ experience and many are renowned in their fields, including celebrity personal trainers and chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants.

Airbnb, which is currently worth about US$10 billion per year, says its app is the only one where you can book such a large variety of services in one place – and it intends to add new services to the platform in the future.

The services are available for different prices, some of which cost less than US$50 (€44, £37).

Airbnb Experiences

As part of an overhaul of the app, the company is also re-launching its Airbnb Experiences feature, another hosting service for users to book interesting and different activities in new locations.

The company originally started offering bespoke local activities as ‘experiences’ in 2016 but the option wasn’t successful. The company’s CEO, Brian Chesky, told Wired that this was because the feature was introduced too early, without follow-up marketing and a lack of sustained new experiences on the platform.

Chesky believes the revitalisation of the app with multiple offerings will make Airbnb the ultimate concierge.

Hosted by vetted locals, experiences in 650 cities around the world are now on offer – with more on the way.

These experiences include:

• Landmark cultural experiences such as a tour of Notre-Dame’s in Paris by Axelle Ponsonnet, an architect from its restoration team.
• Food tours and cooking classes like a ramen-making workshop by Saburo Ishigōka – a chef from a Michelin Bib Gourmand-awarded restaurant in Tokyo.
• Wellness experiences and workouts, such as a wrestling training session with a professional luchador in Mexico city.

Airbnb Originals

Experiences designed exclusively for Airbnb are also launching on the app, as Airbnb Originals.

Among other events planned, singer Sabrina Carpenter will host a day of dancing and a sneak peek behind the set of her album set and a beach volleyball class will be taught by Olympian Carol Solberg on Rio’s iconic Leblon Beach.

App overhaul

The app is no longer designed to just book a stay in residential properties, but has been entirely re-built to include a number of features to allow users to explore a location’s services and experiences, with a calendar to manage reservations.

The Services, Experiences and Originals will offer more than 10,000 vendors an opportunity to sell in 260 cities in 30 countries.

Chesky’s aim is to get users to open the app more frequently and use it as a form of travel agent to explore authentic experiences anywhere in the world.

Airbnb was founded in 2007 and has since grown to more than five million hosts who have facilitated more than two billion guest arrivals in almost every country around the globe.

Read more about how Airbnb revolutionised the travel industry in a profile piece in Spa Business of one of the company's co-founders and chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk.