Airbnb launches second Korean trip service in Jeju
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Airbnb launched its second Korean trip service in Jeju Island, Monday. / Courtesy of Airbnb Korea
By Yun Suh-young
Global home-sharing platform Airbnb which launched its experiential trip service "Experiences" in Seoul in 2016 has introduced Jeju as its second Experiences location in Korea, Monday.
Airbnb currently has over 5,000 trips registered in 60 cities across the globe. Seoul has around 120 trips registered and Jeju will begin with 20 trips.
"Jeju has long been a sought-after travel location among locals and foreign travelers in Korea following Seoul. We will provide trips that only Jeju locals will be able to introduce. Everyone knows about Jeju but the trip hosts will show tourists the Jeju they can never discover on their own," Hong Jong-hee, PR manager at Airbnb Korea, said during a press event in Seoul, Monday.
The Jeju experiential trips will be as authentic as it can get. The first batch of hosts include a marine biologist, a singer-songwriter and upcycling designer, kickboarders, a trail runner and an outdoor activities expert to name a few.
The marine biologist will offer a unique 90-minute experience of dyeing the bones of marine creatures along with explanations about them. The beautifully colored sea creatures' bones will be put in transparent containers to take home. The singer-songwriter and upcycling designer will perform his own music in a house concert as well as chat over tea with visitors. The three kickboarder hosts will teach visitors how to kickboard along the beach while the trail-runner will run with travelers along the Jeju trail spanning 7 kilometers. An outdoor activities expert who owns a mountain cabin refurbished from a stable will grill marshmallows on a bonfire and chat with visitors over wine at his cottage.
Airbnb's aggressive expansion of the Experiences service across the globe reflects its growing demand and popularity among travelers since its launch. The growth of Experiences is recorded as 25 times that of the accommodation service when it first launched in 2008. The reservation rate of Experiences increased by 2,500 percent last year.
Airbnb will add more categories to the Experiences service such as social dining, adventures, concerts and social impact trips in the near future. This year it plans to increase the Experiences locations to 1,000 destinations including authentic places such as Easter Island, Iceland and Tasmania.