Why do you believe traditional text-based chatbots are completely wrong for travel and shopping?
Co-founder & CEO at Airbnb
Chatbots are fundamentally text-based, which makes visual comparison shopping painful. Travel is multiplayer, browse-oriented, and visual. The average Airbnb booking involves three people traveling together who need to share listings, toggle filters, inspect photos, and compare tradeoffs like location versus amenities side by side. When you use a chatbot, you lose that visual overview. You cannot see what happens to your inventory when you turn off a single filter. Chatbots are a specific conversational user interface, not the destination for complex commerce. We had to build an interface that feels responsive and conversational without sacrificing the rich, visual navigation tools guests need.
This answer is part of a full interview with Brian Chesky, Co-founder & CEO at Airbnb.
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