Airbnb CEO discusses what’s in store for the company ahead of summer travel season

Do you feel a little like Willy Wonka? A little bit. Do you like that analogy? I love that analogy. Brian Chesky's not the first tech CEO to promise to make dreams come true. These are color swatches of tiles for siding for the Up house. But if your dream is to spend a night in the house from the movie Up... We lifted this 40-foot house 50 feet in the air. Or to sleep over at the Ferrari Museum in Italy... Airbnb may have your golden tickets. We always thought, what if these worlds that existed in our imagination, we could bring to reality, and you could book them on Airbnb? Chesky and his company launching about a dozen of these icons, as they call them, in a marketing stunt going viral. Good press after a wave of harsher headlines. That's why we'll make sure your listing has an impossibly complicated lockbox. Summed up in an SNL sketch this spring. Why stay in a hotel when, for basically the same amount of money, you could stay in a place with worse sheets? Did that sting? It didn't sting. I felt, if anything, like, you know, like we have a huge responsibility. We're a part of culture. The brand is a noun and verb used all over the world. But for some, the brand started straying too far from its 2007 roots as an affordable alternative to hotels. Customers concerned about too many fees and higher prices. Do you think you lost the thread on the value piece of it? A little bit, insofar that perceptions of reality be dead. I mean, objectively, the prices went up. That became this kind of symbol for people. Like, why am I paying these cleaning fees and humping my trash out behind the alley when I can just stay at a hotel? The way I think about it is you have to listen to, like, the community. And when people tell us that, like, Airbnbs aren't as affordable as they used to be and we're feeling nickel and dime in cleaning fees, you take that very seriously. Chesky says they've worked hard to increase price transparency and to foster more competition among hosts. The result? Airbnbs are cheaper than they used to be on a year-of-year basis and hotels are up. So the prices are going like this. After a pandemic slump, Airbnb has roared back after going public in 2020. But even that IPO got less attention, Chesky says, than a promotion for the Barbie Dreamhouse tied to the hit movie last year. We just wanted to create, like, a moment of joy for people, a moment of magic. Now he thinks AI can help. What if an app could understand you, learn about your hopes, your dreams, and personalize these itineraries and these trips just for you? That's what AI can do. I think there are so many people who would listen to you say that and go, that sounds so cool. And I think some of those same people might say, and also kind of scary and, like, a little bit risky. It's an incredibly good thing. It is a little scary and a little exciting. I think that's how technology is. And I think whether, like, the world is one we should be excited about or fear depends on the people whose hands you entrust the technology with. Like his and his companies. In his view, nowhere to go but up. We're going to do something even crazier and bigger and hopefully bring even more magic to the world. Bigger than the Uphouse? Even crazier. Thanks for watching. Stay updated about breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app or follow us on social media.