05/21/2018
What is Airbnb?
Airbnb is an online community marketplace that enables people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations ranging from homes to castles all around the world. It is
a community built on trust and transparency because they encourage guests and hosts to review each other after each trip is completed.
The idea came from two roommates, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, trying to lessen their financial burden from rent. They transformed their living room into a space that guests could rent by offering an air mattress and serving Pop-tarts for breakfast.
The concept of Airbnb, formerly known as AirBed and Breakfast, was officially launched in October 2007 to help attendees of the Industrial Design Conference in San Francisco find affordable lodging. After adding Nathan Blecharczyk in February 2008, the founding team managed to launch the Airbedandbreakfast.com site officially in August 2008. During the early days, the site offered spaces like living room couches and extra bedrooms.
In March 2009, they shortened the name, becoming Airbnb.com. At that point they also broadened their offerings with everything from couches to entire houses, castles, igloos, cottages, and anything else that may provide a unique travel experience for a guest.
The company has exploded in size and today they offer an incredible 2,000,000 listings, which can be found 34,000 cities of 190 countries. They have raised $2.39B in funding at a valuation of about $25.5B.
With Airbnb.com, guests can find unique places to stay, save money, and have an unforgettable travel experience, but what what’s in it for the host? Well, Airbnb helps hosts monetize their latent spaces by making it easy for them to list and earn rental income. Of course, prices will fluctuate from one neighborhood to another, but with Airbnb this additional income is now more within reach for the average person.
Airbnb is part of the sharing economy, and they popularized the concept of home sharing. In its quest for dominance in the market, Airbnb has caught a fair amount of pushback from the hotel industry, affordable housing proponents, city councils, landlords, and neighbors of the hosts because of its business model and operations. Unlike traditional hotels, Airbnb does not own any of the spaces that it offers on the marketplace, thus allowing it to scale by simply adding more spaces and guests to the marketplace. Given its current trajectory, Airbnb has the ability to transform the hotel industry and shake up the multi-family rental business.
