Airbnb on Wednesday announced several changes to its online booking platform aimed at making it more competitive in the company’s competition with hotels, Reuters reported.

The San Francisco-based company said it wants to create a safer and more reliable experience for travelers who choose to organize their vacations on their own, as 2023 has been a spectacular year for tourism after the recent lifting of restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. .

In Europe, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and Turkey are among the countries that reported record tourism receipts this year.

“Airbnb is quite big. But as big as we are, almost 10 times more people are staying in hotels,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told Reuters.

Airbnb said last week that 113.2 million accommodation nights and “experiences” were booked through its platform in the third quarter of this year, up 14% from the same period in 2022.

What changes is Airbnb making to its platform?

Now, the company has announced the launch of Favorite Guests, a collection of 2 of the 7 million properties available for rent on the platform. This feature will include the most popular properties based on reviews, which will typically have an average rating of over 4.9 stars.

Airbnb claims that around 23% of customers who book on the platform for the first time choose a low-rated accommodation.

In that context, the company has redesigned its reviews page to allow guests to sort through reviews, and introduced a new set of tools for hosts, allowing them to provide more information about the home they are offering for rent.

Among the new features is the use of an artificial intelligence tool to organize photos by room, so that customers can better understand how the house is divided.

This latest feature comes after Chesky revealed last month that Airbnb had begun using artificial intelligence to pre-identify potential “problem” customers.

PHOTO article: © Mohamad Kaddoura | Dreamstime.com