AIRBNB ORIGINALS
Experience Curation · Marketplace Strategy · Creative Direction
Shaping Airbnb’s new signature tier of Experiences across Europe—turning local expertise into distinctive, bookable products for a global marketplace.
Carve marble with a third-generation sculptor Photos: AirbnbIMPACT
Shaped and approved hundreds of Originals across 23 EMEA cities while building the regional operating rhythms and quality practices that moved creative judgment upstream and improved the portfolio before launch.
DESIGNING A NEW TIER OF EXPERIENCES
By 2025, Airbnb had built one of the world’s largest accommodation marketplaces around the idea of helping people “belong anywhere.” With its 2025 Summer Release, the company extended that ambition beyond where people stayed toward what they could do, discover and participate in once they arrived—introducing completely reimagined Experiences across 650 cities alongside Services and an all-new app.
The question was both commercial and creative. More supply alone would not establish Airbnb in an increasingly crowded experiential-travel category. The business needed experiences distinctive enough to earn bookings and support its GBV ambition, while giving guests a compelling reason to choose Airbnb for activities as well as accommodation.
Originals were the clearest expression of that ambition: experiences hosted by remarkable local experts and designed exclusively for Airbnb. From carving marble with a third-generation sculptor in Athens to learning restoration techniques from conservators entrusted with works by Caravaggio in Rome, the promise was not simply access. It was a perspective on culture, craft and place that guests would struggle to find on their own. The challenge was turning those ingredients into a coherent, bookable product that could remain culturally specific while working inside a global marketplace.
A PRODUCT BUILT FROM HOST, ACTIVITY AND PLACE
I joined the work as an EMEA Experiences Curator in the lead-up to launch, helping shape a portfolio spanning 23 cities from Lisbon to Istanbul. I managed the region’s external agency relationship, helped set market and category priorities, and reviewed the hosts, venues and concepts surfaced through a distributed network of regional leads and city-based connectors.
Working alongside Airbnb’s Offline Design team, I assessed concepts for product alignment, experience quality and commercial viability, then helped develop the strongest ideas into publishable experiences. Across art, food, architecture, surfing, wellness, performance and other formats, I reviewed, developed and approved hundreds of concepts.
The core judgment was whether host, activity and place combined to create something a guest could only find on Airbnb. Hosts needed genuine authority in their field; the activity needed a clear arc and meaningful participation; and the setting needed to be essential rather than decorative. Access had to be credible, and the proposition distinctive enough to earn a guest’s time and money. When those elements aligned, local knowledge could become a marketable product without losing the specificity that made it valuable.
MOVING CREATIVE JUDGEMENT UPSTREAM
As the Originals portfolio accelerated toward launch, the distributed sourcing model created a structural risk: design could become a late-stage approval gate, encountering weak hosts, unsuitable venues or unresolved concepts only after substantial work had already been invested.
To get ahead of that, I established weekly regional touchpoints, office hours and direct communication channels that allowed teams to pressure-test hosts, venues and early concepts before formal review. This moved creative judgment upstream, resolving critical issues earlier, reducing wasted development and giving regional teams a clearer shared understanding of what made an Original worth pursuing. The goal was not to centralize taste, but to give local teams stronger judgment earlier in the process.
The intervention moved beyond shaping individual experiences to strengthen the practice behind them. When I transitioned from Originals to Organic supply, I handed the EMEA portfolio back to the team with stronger agency relationships, established operating rhythms and a clearer shared quality bar. What began as curating a premium portfolio had become building better conditions for distinctive experiences to emerge across the region.
