Airbnb tests its own travel guide app
Airbnb is currently testing a new stand-alone app called Airbnb Trips that can help travellers to create custom itineraries by letting them access local recommendations to restaurants, bars, shops and entertainment. Furthermore, the app will also list curated activities such as tours, concerts and festivals, while allowing Airbnb hosts to earn more money by giving local tours to guests themselves. This comes as Airbnb looks for differentiated revenue streams beyond providing home-sharing services, which has proven fraught with legal difficulties. A test version of the new app briefly went live on Google Play yesterday, but was almost immediately taken down and is now listed as “unreleased.”

Airbnb is testing a new app called Airbnb Trips , which offers city guides and local event suggestions. The app was first spotted by Bloomberg , which suggests that the app could be part of Airbnb's plan to begin offering travel services beyond merely booking a home. Those don't appear to be built into the app just yet, but it's easy to imagine Trips turning into a way to make restaurant reservations or book a tour.

Some of Trip's features — like city guides — are already available in Airbnb's existing app. But Airbnb has been clear recently about recognizing the need to find a business beyond rentals. It's started up an experimental design group for that very purpose, although it's likely to be more straightforward travel services that'll catch on with a broader audience, at least in the short term.

Airbnb's Trips app is available in the Play Store, but it's currently in beta and testing slots are filled up (the app is also labeled as "unreleased"). That means you probably won't be able to check it out until Airbnb actually releases Trips, be it as a standalone app or through new features built into the core Airbnb app itself. The Information previously reported that Airbnb is targeting November to roll out local recommendation features.