Airbnb Accused of Poaching Tour Guides From Rival Platforms to Grow Experiences

Whether the poaching attempts were a rogue or not, it's clear that Airbnb is going all-out to compete in its new experiences business.

Airbnb needs to expand its tour supply for its newly relaunched Experiences business, and two rival tour platforms say Airbnb tried to poach their guides.

Canada-headquartered ToursByLocals and Netherlands-based Withlocals said separately that people with Airbnb email addresses created accounts on their sites, and then violated their terms and conditions by messaging tour guides to recruit them to Airbnb Experiences.

“There’s a better way to grow the travel experiences space and it’s not by scraping platforms or poaching hosts," ToursByLocals CEO Lisa Chen said in a statement. "At ToursByLocals, our entire model is built around empowering local business