Vacation rental company, Airbnb, recently unveiled its 2023 May Release, which includes Airbnb Rooms, an all-new take on the original Airbnb, offering more affordable ways for guests to experience a destination by staying with a local, alongside 50 more features and upgrades to its online services.

Since the beginning of Airbnb, there have been 1.4 billion all-time guest arrivals, with more guests travelling last year than ever before.

Airbnb Rooms

Airbnb Rooms features an all-new way to search for private room stays with a dedicated Rooms Category, learn more about a Host via their Host passport, as well as ways to narrow guests’ search using additional filters and expanded privacy features.

Private bedroom listings are one of Airbnb’s most popular types of stay for guests, with the Private Room Category (now ‘Rooms’), the third-most-booked category since it launched Airbnb Categories last May.

With private bedroom stays in more than 60 000 cities and towns around the world, and paired with today’s updates, Airbnb Rooms is a unique way to see a city by staying with a local. In Q1 2023, four out of five reviewed stays in a private room received its highest five-star rating.

Last year, nights stayed in a private room listing grew by 40% compared with the year prior, pointing to travellers seeking out more affordable travel amid rising cost of living. In fact, more than 47 000 cities had at least one private bedroom listing with an average price of under US$50 last year.

New features and upgrades

There are now 50 more features and upgrades aimed at improving Airbnb services, based on feedback from its users, which include:  

• Redesigned wishlists, featuring an all-new interface, one-tap saving, and an improved calendar that shows availability of wishlisted homes. Guests can also add notes to any wishlisted listing. Since launching wishlists a decade ago, over one billion wishlists have been created.
• Total price display, with the option to view the total price with fees, before taxes, across the entire app, including search results, price filter, maps, and listing pages. Since December, when the feature was offered to guests as optional, more than eight million visitors turned the total price toggle on.
• Transparent check-out instructions, so guests can now view check-out instructions on the listing page before booking, and receive a reminder before they leave the home. During the review process, guests can tell Airbnb about any excessive requests. And listings with repeated low ratings from unreasonable chores will be removed from Airbnb.
• Improved maps, already used by more than 80% of guests, Airbnb has updated maps with faster performance, persistent pins when zooming and panning, and more results when searching.

As part of the 50 upgrades, Airbnb will also launch 25 improvements for hosts, including new pricing tools to help them see the nightly price, inclusive of all fees, compare the average prices of similar listings booked nearby, and easily add weekly and monthly discounts.