Airbnb gets a makeover and enlists the historic Apple designer

The collaboration with Jony Ive will serve to rethink the site and the app but will also cover new products and services. Airbnb strengthens ahead of listing

(Image: pixabay) Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has announced that from now on Apple's longtime designer Jony Ive will take care of the site and 'Airbnb app, also coordinating the designer team inside the platform. In perhaps the most difficult year since its foundation in 2007, the portal for short-term rentals is thus aiming for a renewal that also includes design, further strengthening its image in view of its debut on the markets.

The British Ive, who was the mind - as well as the pencil - behind the shapes that have made the main Apple devices successful in the last twenty years, he left the Cupertino company in 2019 to start his own business by founding the LoveFrom company. Since then he has continued to collaborate with Apple, and from today his creation also inaugurates this new "special collaboration", as Chesky himself defines it, with Airbnb.

As we learn, the new partnership will give life above all to a restyling of the application and the platform for reservations, probably adding new features to increase the user experience, but the use of Ive will also concern the definition of new services and products that Airbnb wants to develop in view of the next important steps.

Towards the Stock Exchange

The start of a multi-year collaboration with such a high-sounding name comes in the midst of the rush for listing on the Stock Exchange that Airbnb has repeatedly postponed in the past and which it now seems ever closer. In August, the company filed documents for its initial public offering which is expected to take place by the end of December.

Just over two weeks ago, moreover, the platform also unveiled new estimates in view of the debut on Wall Street, underlining how the positive signs of recovery in accommodation bookings during the past months have given new life to the accounts . According to what was reported, in fact, after negative forecasts that had seen the market valuation of Airbnb fall below 18 billion dollars, in the latest estimates that value seems to be more likely to be in a range ranging from 21 to 30 billion. dollars.