Airbnb now wants to bring that sort of experience to all travelers. The site said Thursday it’s expanding beyond home rentals to also include personalized tours and trip planning.

Basically, Airbnb wants to be a travel agent.

“Homes are just one small part of a great journey,” Chesky said during an event at the historic Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. “We realized we needed to create a holistic experience.”

Airbnb has gone from a site for couch surfers to a massive online presence in the past nine years. It lists roughly 3 million homes for rent in more than 34,000 cities in nearly 200 countries. […]

With “experiences,” guests can choose from hundreds of different excursions put together by local hosts. The trips can be multi-day or just short adventures. Such “experiences” include surfing in Malibu, learning about Nelson Mandela in Cape Town and truffle hunting in Tuscany. Chesky said more than half of the excursions are under $200.

“It’s all about immersing in local communities,” Chesky said. “These aren’t tours, you actually participate.”

Airbnb is also offering “social impact experiences,” hosted by nonprofits, in which all proceeds from the activity go to the nonprofits without Airbnb taking a cut. Initially, “experiences” will be available in 12 cities: Detroit, London, Paris, Nairobi, Havana, San Francisco, Cape Town, Florence, Miami, Seoul, Tokyo and Los Angeles. But Airbnb plans to add more than 50 cities in the next year.

“Dominant hoteliers such as Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt built their reputations on ensuring that guests could expect consistently, predictable experiences anywhere in the world, but connected consumers now want the opposite of that,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst for Altimeter Group. “As much as Airbnb commercialized personal space, the real play was to get to the root of what consumers really want…experiences.” […]

Chesky seems confident Airbnb won’t have a problem scaling, he said his aim is to eventually have “Trips” in every city around the world.

“This is just a small preview of things to come,” he said. “This is literally just the beginning.”