MUMBAI: Airbnb has found the perfect long-term guest and it’s Artificial Intelligence. The home-sharing giant revealed that around 60 per cent of the code produced in the first quarter of 2026 was written using AI tools, marking a significant acceleration in its adoption of generative AI. Speaking on the company’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Brian Chesky emphasised how AI is reshaping everything from software development to customer experience.
AI is proving especially useful in building better tools for Airbnb’s API partners, enabling individual engineers to deploy supervised AI agents that handle large volumes of work. This has reduced the need for bigger engineering teams and unlocked projects that were previously limited by resources.
On the customer service front, the company’s AI-powered support bot is now resolving around 40 per cent of issues without human escalation up from 33 per cent earlier in the year. The firm is also experimenting with AI enhancements to its search functionality.
However, Chesky was candid about the current limitations of chatbots in travel. He noted challenges such as the visual nature of travel decisions, the need for easy comparison tools, multi-person booking dynamics, and map-based navigation, which make traditional chatbot interfaces less effective.
Financially, Airbnb delivered a solid performance. Revenue rose 18 per cent year-on-year to $2.7 billion, while net income grew 3.9 per cent to $160 million. Nights booked increased 9 per cent to 156.2 million, and the company’s “Reserve now, pay later” feature accounted for nearly 20 per cent of gross booking value.
As one of the most high-profile adopters of AI in travel, Airbnb is showing how smart integration of artificial intelligence can boost productivity while still acknowledging that human judgement remains essential for delivering great guest experiences.
