Airbnb Uses Proximity Signals for Cold-Start Personalization

Airbnb launched Proximity Features, which groups users into buckets of about 1,000 based on IP geolocation to personalize search and recommendations without individual identifiers. The system addresses cold-start users arriving logged out or without history, and works under GDPR consent constraints. It has rolled out to marketing landing pages and homepage AutoSuggest, with engagement emails being tested.