Famed poet T.S. Eliot once said: “The journey not the arrival matters.” Airbnb has built itself up by casting the entire travel experience at the forefront of its mission. The company wants guests to know that it’s with them even after booking a place to stay. This is the reason why Airbnb is launching its Apple Watch app today.
Airbnb’s new app facilitates communications easily and quickly without having to take out a mobile device. For guests, they can message their hosts and ask them questions (via dictation) about the property or for advice on things to do, where to eat, etc. For some, traveling to a new city can be intimidating and they may need that helpful local guide to assist.
Hosts can also benefit from this app in that it’ll allow them to not only instantly respond to lodging requests complete with the guest’s name, photo, requested dates, and personal message, but they can also reply back to frequently asked questions through the use of pre-recorded messages. If a guest asks about the Wi-Fi password or has other particular inquiries, the host can tap a button on their Apple Watch and a pre-populated answer will be delivered.
“Airbnb is about more than just a place to lay your head, it is about providing a great experience during your whole trip, and the Apple Watch is the perfect way for Airbnb to stay with you wherever you are,” says Alex Schleifer, the company’s head designer. “Our hosts want to deliver personal hospitality to every guest and messaging through Airbnb’s Apple Watch app is one of the first and fastest ways they can create a long-lasting connection.”
This isn’t Airbnb’s first foray on the Apple Watch. When the device launched, the service was one of the first to integrate with Apple’s Passbook, but over time, the company found out what worked and what doesn’t. And now there’s an official WatchOS app.
Developing an application for the Apple Watch took Airbnb into uncharted territory. Keenan Cummings, the head of the company’s experience architecture team, tells VentureBeat that when research was done into what kind of app could be developed, his team had to become experts in wearable technology as there wasn’t enough data showing the promise of the Watch. That being said, Cummings says that as people are unfamiliar with the platform, it gives Airbnb an opportunity to not only teach them about what the company is, but also help them understand the Watch.
The team looked at different task types but realized that messaging is what could be the best. And although some might have expected the app to include options to browse for available rental properties, that wasn’t going to be in the cards for Airbnb. “We knew early on that booking exclusively from the watch didn’t make sense,” says Cummings.
There could have been richer features added as well to make this Watch app do much more than chatting, but it was all a matter of being disciplined. Cummings explained that his team saw getting all the details of a task in a single glance is powerful and something that Airbnb’s hosts wanted and could use. It’s about simplicity instead of making the app overly complex and seemingly unwieldy.
Isaac Lim, an iOS developer at Airbnb, echoed Cumming’s statement: “The Apple Watch is very much a secondary device; a second screen, if you will, of the iPhone. Naturally, it follows that our Watch app should be just that: a lightweight extension of the Airbnb iOS app. We needed to capitalize on a targeted and important part of the Airbnb experience that embodied the on-the-go nature of the Apple Watch, and messaging fit that description perfectly.”
For those looking for an Android Wear version, one doesn’t exist, but the company says that it’s on their radar.
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