Nov. 18–Airbnb is launching an ambitious plan called Trips to handle all aspects of travel — arranging unique tours worldwide and eventually booking flights, car rentals and restaurant reservations.

The San Francisco company considers it the next evolution in its "live like a local" mantra. With more than 100 million users, Airbnb has a huge head start to become even more of a travel behemoth, going up against the likes of Kayak, Orbitz and Expedia, which owns rival HomeAway, and TripAdvisor, which owns rival FlipKey.

Airbnb described the change as the "biggest news in company history," saying it marks "a significant before-and-after point (not only) for the company, but for the industry as a whole."

"We need to create a holistic travel experience, for the whole trip," said CEO Brian Chesky from the stage of Los Angeles' opulent Orpheum Theatre at the onset of Airbnb Open, the company's annual festival for hosts.

An estimated 7,000 hosts, employees and partners from over 100 countries flocked to the three-day event, most staying in Airbnb rentals throughout the city. The 2,000 at the Orpheum whooped and clapped enthusiastically as Chesky described Airbnb's new push into immersing visitors in experiences led by local guides: truffle hunting in Tuscany, psychedelic meditation, burlesque dance, dirt-bike road trips.

In San Francisco, for instance, artist Toby Klayman will welcome guests to her studio, "where you will learn about San Francisco's deep artistic roots while creating your own prints and paintings."

Expedia started tacking on activities to existing flight and hotel bookings 16 years ago. But its tours tend toward the standard and commercial, like bay cruises and wine country day trips.

On typical tours, "You're in line, you're lonely and you're doing things locals never do," Chesky said. Airbnb's tours, which it promotes with professionally produced movie-like posters and videos, focus on unique, off-the-beaten-path adventures offered by experts eager to share their passions. Many will cost $200 or less. Airbnb's cut will be 20 percent.

Airbnb also is getting into travel recommendations, with online "insider guides," such as "My Malibu" by world surf champion Kelly Slater, a list of Havana music venues from a longtime Cuban musician, or looks at the art and design of Nairobi, Kenya. It also offers walking audio podcasts through a partnership with Detour.

An updated app will let travelers choose from Homes (Airbnb's regular rentals), Experiences (tours and adventures), and Places (locals' guidebook-like recommendations). But while the new Experiences and Places features showcase vibrant local cultures, the real money will come when Airbnb begins booking flights, cars and restaurants. Chesky was vague about the timing of those services.

Experiences are available now in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit, London, Paris, Nairobi, Havana, Cape Town, Florence, Seoul and Tokyo, and will be in 50 cities next year.

High school teacher Christie Bruin has hosted guests for four years at her home outside Sydney and looks forward to leading bush tours of Blue Mountains National Park, where visitors can spy kangaroos and wallabies.

"This shows they are dreaming big about becoming an integrated travel service," she said of Airbnb's new push. "It's rather clever."

For Airbnb, broadening its scope makes sense. Despite being worth $30 billion, making it one of the world's most valuable privately held companies, Airbnb is confronting significant challenges to its core business of traveler lodging in private homes, in part due to its runaway success with 3 million listings globally.

New York, its biggest U.S. market, and San Francisco, its hometown, want to drastically curb the practice, saying it siphons off permanent housing. Other cities worldwide, such as Barcelona and Berlin, likewise are taking a hard line on Airbnb. Los Angeles hotel workers and housing activists held a protest rally on the eve of Airbnb's event, calling for tougher rules. Besides its clashes with regulators, Airbnb now faces stronger pushback from the deep-pocketed hotel industry, which has started to see casual rentals erode its business.

One host at the conference, Sigfridur Thorsteinsdottir, who lists her Reykjavik bed and breakfast on Airbnb, said controversy about vacation rentals is engulfing Iceland, a country of 330,000 that expects 2 million tourists next year. "We had a long downturn when very little housing was built," she said. "So many apartments now are used on Airbnb that it's very difficult for ordinary people to find places to live."

While echoing arguments made by Airbnb hosts in San Francisco and elsewhere — that renting to travelers helps people afford escalating costs — she acknowledges that many neighborhoods find the influx of tourists disruptive. Just like San Francisco, Reykjavik is imposing a registration system and annual caps on vacation rentals, but both are widely ignored as many hosts "operate underground," Thorsteinsdottir said.

Hosts at the Airbnb Open event are expected to hear pep talks from company executives, attend workshops on themes like "Finding your inner happy host," and get inspiration from Ashton Kutcher, Gwyneth Paltrow and author Elizabeth Gilbert. They'll also experience some of the new tours in the Los Angeles area. James Corden will host an awards ceremony named after Airbnb's much-maligned symbol, the Belo. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will discuss how Airbnb is addressing instances of discrimination, an issue Chesky recently vowed to tackle.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @csaid