THE HOSPITALITY HERETIC
Business Travel Ready property lists and a suite of management tools indicates Airbnb is more than a fringe player in managed travel. $1.5 million in private funding secures its near future; if only the pesky lawsuits would disappear.
Airbnb took a major step into the managed travel sphere in July when it introduced a new suite of management tools. They allow corporate travel managers to view employee bookings and itineraries at Airbnb properties, to export companywide financial data and reports in real time and to centralize billing. According to Airbnb, it signed contracts with 500 new companies within 24 hours of unveiling the travel management suite.
Building on that momentum, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky and company announced a partnership with serviced apartment provider BridgeStreet Global Hospitality in October. Under the multiyear agreement, Airbnb makes its listings available to BridgeStreet clients and, more important, BridgeStreet makes its serviced apartments available via Airbnb’s business travel platform, enhancing the sharing-economy company’s inventory of properties it brands Business Travel Ready.
In spite of the strides Airbnb has made, there’s still a great deal of skepticism around whether it will ever truly be able to dominate the corporate lodging space. Hilton Worldwide CEO Christopher Nassetta maintains that the home-sharing platform caters to a different audience than do traditional hotels. Airbnb, for its part, is adopting tactics familiar to hoteliers. In November, it launched its Smart Pricing tool for hosts, which sets competitive prices for listings based on market demand, a clear nod to hotel revenue management.
If 2015 is any indicator, Airbnb will expand and enhance every aspect of its platform in the coming year. The company secured $1.5 billion in private funding in June, raising its valuation to $25.5 billion, nearly double what it was when Chesky appeared on BTN’s Most Influential Executives last year. In November, it received another $100 million in private funding. The company’s main obstacle continues to be legal challenges, which it faced this past year in Berlin, New York City, San Francisco and Santa Monica, Calif. As a result of the pushback from local lawmakers, Airbnb in November released a Community Compact in which it pledged to release annual Home Sharing Activity Reports for key markets, featuring information like the geographic distribution of listings, the average number of days homes are listed and the safety records of listings. Airbnb also vowed to work with hosts and host cities to ensure the company is honoring local laws and limiting the impact of short-term rentals on long-term housing availability.