Experiences: a home-sharing platform for Goa by Airbnb

With its picture postcard beauty, Goa has, for long, been a tempting invitation on the tourist map of India and cashing on its cosmopolitan culture, travel companies have always ranked it high on their business graph. It’s a cultural melting point too with hospitable locals who spend their idle evenings with a glass of locally brewed cashew feni and hot local bread-omelet on the ‘balcao’ of their spacious homes in their idyllic beachside villages. The culturally rich State has a unique identity with a 100 plus km coastline dotting across, wrapping the islands, hinterlands, plateaus and mountains. The Western Ghats, rich wildlife, folk art and craft, music, dance, food, churches and temples that makes it a perfect host to those who want to indulge in experiences rather than shopping. Airbnb that already has around 5000 homes, villas and heritage properties already on their platform, has now launched ‘Experiences’ – a platform where local hosts can share their experiences, passions and interests with those tourists who visit them as guests.  It was recently launched by Chris Lehane, Head of Airbnb Global Public Policy and Communications. 

With its headquarters based in San Francisco, Airbnb has its presence in 191 countries, 81,000 cities and more than 5 million homes on its worldwide platform. What started as three friends sharing an apartment and bringing in people into their home, has now transformed into the largest accommodation network across the globe. “If I zoom out a little bit and talk about India, it is one of the key growing markets for Airbnb,” states Amanpreet Bajaj, Country Manager, Airbnb – India. Pointing out that Airbnb was launched in India about two years ago, officially but as an organic platform the company has seen a lot of growth since the website was launched eight years ago by the company founders.   

“When people travelled abroad, met their friends, families, the came back and they started posting themselves. So organic growth was always there but in the last two and a half years after the official launch, we have started focusing on that. Speaking about growth in the last two years, we have more than 31,000 listings in India and Goa is our biggest market. Goa has 5000 plus homes, villas, heritage properties, already on the platform,” shared Bajaj.   

Apart from the sharing business, two years ago Airbnb also launched something called ‘Experiences’ wherein people could share their passion points, what they believed in and they want to bring in local people into their local community. “We provided them a platform to start doing this across the globe. So what we launched in 12 cities as 500 ‘Experiences’ including New Delhi in 2017 is now coming to Goa,” says Bajaj.   

Elaborating how the concept of ‘Experiences’ works, Sriram Vaidhya, Head of Aribnb Trips, Southeast Asia & India adds, “We always looked at the home spaces as a community powered platform and we are continuing looking for ways to enable people to have magical travel with new experiences, so in 2016 we launched the ‘Experiences’. Currently in 180 different markets around the world, there are 12,000 experiences on our platform and that’s the business that we are bringing to Goa. Experiences are intended to be unique hand crafted activities hosted by locals who are sharing their passions or their interests, their hobbies… by hosting these experiences they are able to meet Airbnb guests from all over India, all over the world and essentially build small businesses. So it’s a platform for entrepreneurship.”   

Bajaj points out, “In Goa a lot of people are sharing their primary homes, the homes that they are staying in, and those are the best examples of right kind of hospitality that they are able to showcase. When people or families come and stay with them they are able to immerse in the local culture, eat with them or see where they buy their vegetables from, cook with them. That kind of authentic travel is very enriching these days.”   

The secondary homes is also a phenomena that Airbnb is looking into. Lot of people who stay in Mumbai, Bengaluru, or even in Goa – they had these homes but they were never able to monetize. By Airbnb model they are now opening up their homes. The company offers something called co-hosting, so even if people are not here, they can offer their homes to tourist guests. A local person here, who wants to host, who can assist them in check in and check out process. So while the owner is still in Mumbai or elsewhere, there is someone local who understands the locale. The company has tools in the system that enables them to have any kind of relationship, splitting of revenue etc.   

“That’s a model that’s working very well. That’s the reason the market has grown considerably fast in the last two years. Goa as a market has grown 216 per cent in the last two years in terms of the number of listings that are there. And guests who are coming from across the world as well as from other cities in India, booking nights and staying with locals here, that number has grown by 515 per cent in the last two years,” observes Bajaj.   

So clearly, the visiting tourists want to experience Goa in a new way and they want to do that with the locals, stay like a local and not just be tourist here. “That’s the reason we have seen such a growth in the market, and that’s the reason we are launching ‘Experiences’ in Goa in a much bigger way,” discloses Bajaj.   

Vaidhya elaborates on the millennial travelers would rather experience something than buy anything, who would like to spend money on experiences. “People travel for passion now. We want to recapture the magic in travel by allowing people to live like local and understand what it means to be a local,” says Vaidhya.   

Traditionally if one looks at all tourist destinations, tourism would come to only few places where the hotels, old traditional shops or temples. They were traditional districts that would get all the tourism dollars from any visitor that’s coming in. “What we have done is make available a platform like us with 5000 homes spread all across Goa and now it is in neighbourhoods that never saw that kind of tourism dollars coming in. When people from all over the world come and stay in these beautiful homes, get exposed to the beautiful culture, live like locals, they also shop with the locals, eat at a local eatery which their host would recommend, more likely to shop from an artisan or an art and craft place which the host would recommend. So the local economy is getting benefited a lot,” feels Bajaj.   

That is a great empowering story where people can get supplementary income from their assets which were not being utilized. People now can also get income from their interests and passions which they feel strongly about and they can introduce more people to that. So while they get the satisfaction of doing what they are doing, they also get additional income, and the local economy also get benefited. “And we think this is a very healthy and sustainable way of tourism that we are promoting and that makes it click with all the millennials,” says Bajaj.   

“Some of these Experiences are really great, like water surfing, wind surfing with people are national champions or who have long experience in the sports. One can learn the art of wind surfing with him or her, as an experience from this platform. Also food and drinks is a great passion point which bring people to Goa.”   

Airbnb launched a guide book last year in November and that guide book was on how to live like a local in Goa. “As a company we want to have a billion people to have great experiences with Airbnb by 2020. Our host community is very diverse. There are young millennials who want to host. There are senior retired citizens who have a lot of space in their homes. So this is a great opportunity to get company, earn some money by inviting people and sharing their life experiences. This is a people powered platform, a technology platform but it’s all about people and we strongly believe that people when connect with others, its magical.”