Airbnb Is Launching a Program That Will Make You Want to Cook While You Travel

If you think food is the best part of travel, you might be more apt to find the best restaurants to hit rather than whether or not you'll have a kitchen in which you could cook your own meals. You get enough of that at home. Nonetheless, a new program from Airbnb wants you to think about cooking while traveling as something you might genuinely enjoy. 

Airbnb is introducing Airbnb Cooking Experiences, a new series of its Experiences that launches November 25 with more than 3,000 cooking and travel opportunities. The company says its Airbnb Food & Drink bookings have grown 160% since 2018, which triggered the desire to facilitate more cooking-related experiences. The new experiences will include hosts like Nonna Nerina, an 83-year-old grandmother living in Rome, who hosts an Airbnb Experience where she shares divulges and teaches her family pasta recipe.

The launch will coincide with a David Chang-led contest to find "the world's best home cooks." You can apply yourself or nominate a kitchen wizard you know. They could win a trip to Italy and a chance to briefly study at the University of Gastronomic Sciences with David and Sherri Chang. In addition to bragging rights that will drive their family mad, the winner gets to refine a recipe and enshrine it in Airbnb's first cookbook.

With experiences where you learn to cook in different styles and glean knowledge from chefs and families around the world, it doesn't seem all that outlandish to take a vacation and spend a whole lot of time preparing your own meals. 

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