Airbnb is reportedly planning luxury offerings like personal chefs to entice travelers away from hotels.
The company wants to move beyond accommodations and experiences to “services that will make it better for guests to stay in Airbnbs,” Chief Business Officer Dave Stephenson said in an interview with Bloomberg News Wednesday (July 31).
Those services include the aforementioned chef option, mid-week cleaning and an easier time checking in, along with spa services and refrigerator stocking.
Stephenson, whose wife received a massage treatment while staying at an Airbnb property in Paris, said the company is exploring new offerings with these questions in mind: What makes guests want to stay in a hotel and not an Airbnb? How can the company make its marketplace more seamless for guests and hosts?
The executive added that a formal, more detailed announcement about these plans could come “early next year.”
His interview with Bloomberg took place on the sidelines of the Paris Olympics, an event that, as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, has led Airbnb to increase its supply of vacation rentals in the French capital by 40%.
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence shows that financially secure consumers — those who do not live paycheck to paycheck — tend to spend more on travel. Of that group, 40% say their spending on airfare has been “indulgent,” a larger share than said the same of any other type of purchase.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS explored the upper echelons of luxury travel last month in an interview with Eric Grosse, CEO of subscription-based travel firm Inspirato. The company is pushing a digital “country club” type of model for its members, more than half of whom make more than $500,000 per year.
The company offers what it calls “custom travel experiences,” handling all trip planning, asking customers their favorite essentials and making sure the refrigerator is stocked when they arrive, with on-the-ground concierge service for its guests.
“Our members are very affluent, but you still have to be innovative,” Grosse told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “You have to be customer obsessed. You have to understand what it is that members are looking for, because whether that’s economic trends or other factors, it’s fair to say that in all segments of the travel industry, there’s always an evolution of customer taste.”
Corporate delinquencies are reportedly at the highest rate they’ve reached in eight years.
The delinquency rate for loans from U.S. banks to both U.S. and foreign companies rose to 1.3% at the end of 2024, a figure that was the highest since the first quarter of 2017 but well below the 5% seen during the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Times (FT) reported Monday (Feb. 17), citing data from BankRegData.
The total amount of bank debt on which U.S. business borrowers were at least one month late reached $28 billion, up $2.2 billion from three months earlier and up $5.4 billion from a year earlier, according to the report.
The report attributed the rise to interest rates that remain high, surprising some observers who expected them to fall this year. A pickup in inflation in January and concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs have delayed further interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, the report said.
Corporate bank loans tend to be variable rate, so the expected decline in interest rates would have given some relief to borrowers, the report said.
The data from BankRegData does not include loans from direct lenders and private credit funds, per the report.
It was reported in January that the growth in commercial bank loans was at the slowest it’s been since the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Commercial bank loans grew by around 2.7% in 2024, which was only somewhat faster than the 2.3% rise seen in 2023.
A number of bankers said they hoped to see loan growth later this year, citing optimism among clients and other indicators.
Bank of America said during a January earnings call that commercial loans were up 5% year over year in the fourth quarter and that loan and deposit growth in the current year should outpace last year’s.
J.P. Morgan Chase said during a January earnings call that there has been improvement in business sentiment and that balance sheets at small businesses are healthy.
Citi CEO Jane Fraser said during a January earnings call that in the United States, “growth is not only being driven by the higher-end consumer but also by a strong and innovative corporate sector.”