Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: Reimagining Travel’s Future

Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali interviewed Chesky on stage at the Skift Global Forum in September 2022 in Manhattan, where the Airbnb CEO detailed his vision of the new era. Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said travel experts and analysts underestimate travel’s potential, and that the industry would soon witness a new “golden age of travel.” Fueling part of the trend, he argued, is that an estimated 50 percent of U.S. workers could potentially labor on their laptops from home, and they would travel to get out of the house, and seek human connections. Chesky termed it a “dystopian” risk to people to remain glued to their screens all their day, and they will leave their homes to travel and combat loneliness. And they won’t merely be traveling to places such as Las Vegas, Rome and Paris, but would venture out to some of the 100,000 cities and markets where Airbnb would try to inspire them to travel to. Listen to the podcast for the full discussion, and visit Skift Live for details about discussions like this.