From “List your airbed”
to homes, experiences & services.

The oldest capture we use is dated October 11, 2007. Its images and styling didn’t survive, so what you see is a list of links, not the original design. The browser title is Designer's IDSA Connecting Guide. CONFERENCE GUIDE and FIRST TIME TO SF? put the visitor in one city for one event. And between VACANCIES and the conference guide sits the actual offer: LIST YOUR AIRBED.

There is another small story at the bottom: a Featured Sponsors heading, an invitation to Place your company here and a copyright line for Juice Studios, LLC. The first front door in this collection is part accommodation board, part local guide, part ad space. Airbnb’s own timeline dates Brian and Joe’s first guests to October 2007.^[1]

The August page has a blue-and-pink AirBed & Breakfast logo and a blunt tagline: Forget hotels. The browser title is even more direct, Better Than a Cheap Hotel. A pink question above the date fields asks where you are going. Below the search box an air mattress illustrates Become a host, next to two promotions about the DNC and the RNC.

The image descriptions fill in the events: the Democratic convention in Denver, August 25–28, and the Republican convention in St. Paul, September 1–4. That second date differs from the visible RNC promotion, which says September 1–5. The same HTML describes the host illustration as renting out extra space by the night. A trip, an event and a spare bed.

The convention promos were a second try. Airbnb's own timeline says the official launch at SXSW in March 2008 got just two bookings. The August relaunch, timed for the Democratic convention in Denver, got 80.^[1]

The election paid in another way too. In October 2008 TechCrunch wrote about two cereal boxes from AirBed & Breakfast, Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s.^[2] Paul Graham later wrote that once Y Combinator heard the founders had been supporting themselves by selling that cereal, they were in.^[3]

By July 2010 the logo is a blue Airbnb script and the slogan is Travel like a human. A compact, centered layout says Find a place to stay. and counts 5,146 cities in 144 countries. Airbnb dates the shorter name, and the move to apartments and whole homes, to March 2009.^[1] The 2010 still features Altitude in Separation Creek, Australia, at $481 a night. The downloaded HTML of the same capture has 4 Rivers Floating Lodge instead, which is a good reminder that a rotating listing and its screenshot can disagree.

The small print now has a hiring link, best deals in New York, San Francisco and Paris, and a link to Top Cities. The code of the closed language menu lists German, Spanish, French and Italian. Those options are in the HTML. They aren’t all visible in the screenshot.

The March 14, 2011 capture counts 9,421 cities in 173 countries and adds another kind of progress, a flip counter celebrating 1,000,000 nights booked. The listing image above it is missing in this rendering. By May 2012 the city line reaches 19,732, and the cards under the search sell trust and hosting as well as travel. Near the footer the HTML offers View our Global Growth. The map has become part of the pitch.

The May 30 capture stretches a photograph across the page. The same Find a place to stay. now floats over a cabin, followed by 34,183 cities and 192 countries, and the destination and dates merge into one horizontal bar. Bigger number. Much more room for it.

Below the hero is a feature the video barely pauses on, Neighborhood Guides, which answers a smaller question than which city to visit: which part of the city to stay in. The capture lists 61 neighborhoods for Los Angeles, 51 for New York, 47 for London and nine for Venice. Those are guide labels, not counts of listings. Farther down, three columns explain Travel, Host, and Trust and Safety, and the travel column promises the full range: From apartments and rooms to treehouses and boats.

Airbnb dates the Bélo logo to July 2014.^[1] Our August 1 capture shows it in the corner of a new, darker hero that says WELCOME HOME. Underneath, the page still mentions local hosts in 190 countries. No city total. A yellow strip links to The Story Behind the New Airbnb, and lower down a big illustrated panel announces INTRODUCING THE BÉLO.

The redesign makes room for people, too. Community tiles introduce Alice & Chris as travelers and Nina as a host, and the HTML describes Nina as a photographer who helps guests explore Shanghai’s arts scene. The page offers Make Airbnb Yours and invites you to create your own symbol and tell your story. That fits the brief: its designers wanted a symbol simple enough to be drawn by anyone.^[4] Not everyone drew the same thing. BBC News reported a backlash on social media, with many commentators saying the Bélo looked like body parts.^[5]

The next two captures keep the broad hero and the community tiles. May 2015 says WELCOME HOME with 190+ countries; June 2016 says LIVE THERE with 191+ countries. BELONG ANYWHERE appears farther down in both. The opening line has moved from finding a place to imagining yourself in it.

In May 2017 a white page replaces the photo. Airbnb is pink at the start of the headline, and the rest says to book unique homes and experience a city like a local. The search still asks Where, with Anywhere as its placeholder, and the tabs below read For you, Homes, Experiences and Places. No city count. No country count.

Airbnb launched Experiences in November 2016.^[1] Now you can see it in the homepage’s vocabulary: activities, sold next to places to stay.

In 2018 and 2019 the form sits inside a white card over a large photograph. October 2018 says Book unique homes and experiences. June 2019 widens it to Book unique places to stay and things to do. The photo changes. Where and when are still the first two questions.

The November 2020 hero is an illustrated forest with two big words: Go Near. The button says Explore nearby stays, and a pill-shaped search bar runs across the top, below tabs for Places to stay, Experiences and Online Experiences. Airbnb’s timeline places the launch of Online Experiences in April 2020, during the pandemic.^[1] It is a very different trip from the world map of the early pages.

October 2021 keeps the forest and moves the invitation into its clearing: Not sure where to go? Perfect. The button says I'm flexible. Above it, the search field still asks Where are you going?, so the page offers two routes, name a place or let the site pick one. The footer still has practical links for hosts and guests, COVID support among them. The big opening scene sells the freedom not to decide yet.

In June 2022 the full-width scenery gives way to a grid. A small search pill stays at the top. Under it, labeled icons do the browsing: Design, Beach, Cabins, Tiny homes, Islands and OMG!, the one for the most unusual homes.

That last icon got its own budget. In October 2022 Airbnb named 100 people from more than 20 countries and regions for its OMG! Fund, each eligible for up to $100,000 to build an unusual space, with the goal of having them guest-ready by summer 2023.^[7]

Airbnb introduced Categories on May 11, 2022. The announcement explained that people tend to think of a handful of city names, while listings were spread across 100,000 towns and cities, so Categories offered 55 starting points organized by style, location or activity.^[6] The city count is no longer the homepage’s headline. It is the company’s reason for changing search.

Sorting was part machine, part people. Machine learning read listing titles, descriptions, photo captions, host data and guest reviews, and a curation team picked each listing's featured photo. So if a home sits in Amazing Pools, the first photo shows a pool.^[6]

Our May 31, 2024 capture brings back the full Where / Check in / Check out / Who bar. Categories stay underneath it: Amazing views, Icons, Amazing pools and more, and some cards carry Guest favorite badges. Airbnb dates Icons to May 2024.^[1] In this capture Amazing views comes before Icons.

Icons were not ordinary rentals. The launch list included the house from Up, rebuilt in Abiquiu, New Mexico, with more than 8,000 balloons. Most Icons were free, and all were priced under $100 a guest. You couldn't simply book one: guests sent a request through the app, and the ones selected got a digital golden ticket, with more than 4,000 announced for 2024.^[8]

The saved application data for 2024 and 2025 names the visitor, archive.org_bot on a wide screen. These captures record desktop pages served to an archive crawler, not what every visitor saw.

The June 11, 2025 capture turns the top choices into little pictures: a house for Homes, a balloon for Experiences and a bell for Services, the last two with NEW badges. The footer has 2025 Summer Release and Inspiration for future getaways.

Airbnb announced Services and relaunched Experiences on May 13, 2025, describing ten service categories, from chefs and photography to massage, in 260 cities.^[9] The announcement adds that you don’t need to stay at an Airbnb or even be on a trip to book these services. A chef or a massage at home is a different thing to book from a bed.

The final frame comes from the live site on October 3, 2026, loaded with a USD query parameter. It adds All in front of Homes, Experiences and Services. This is a dated view of a page that keeps changing, not an archived Wayback capture, so its link goes to the live site. The Where field now sits below All, Homes, Experiences and Services.

2008 · Where are you going?2008 · Then2026 · All, Homes, Experiences, Services2026 · Live

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The early page counted where you could stay. The later page asks what you want to book.AirBed & Breakfast, 2008 → Airbnb, October 2026