Airbnb is intriguing further aim at big chain hotels and online travel agencies, announcing a program Thursday that desire expand it beyond shared accommodations into something like a full-fledged journeys company.
At an event in San Francisco on Thursday, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky believed that the start-up is making it easier for more hotels to list by stretch the type and quality of its listings. The company is also introducing four new rental lists, hiring people to vet higher-end listings and launching a loyalty program later in the year.
As online go agencies like Booking.com move onto Airbnb’s territory by gift short-term home and apartment rentals, Airbnb is responding by diversifying its contributions, and opening new lines of business like its “Trips” product, which sent in November 2016.
Increasingly, that also means moving beyond shared well-versed ins to hotels. In August of last year, Chesky tweeted that Airbnb had listings for 15,000 boutique new zealand pubs, about 10 months after introducing them to the platform. Earlier this month, Airbnb portended a partnership with SiteMinder, a hotel distribution platform used by numberless than 28,000 hotels around the world.
The four new categories of listings — vacation stingingly, unique space, B&B and boutique — will give hosts “an unprecedented parallel of detail in the travel industry” to showcase their properties, Airbnb contemplated in a release.
By expanding its listings and breaking out categories, Airbnb is taking a leaf from major hotel companies and online travel agencies that propose different brands and price points. In turn, that could embellish the start-up’s customer base as it heads toward an IPO in the next few years.
The recent push is unlikely to put what Chesky has called “mass-produced” hotel shackles on the Airbnb platform.
“We have to be more inclusive of who belong on Airbnb — but there’s also a freak out side: Not everyone belongs on Airbnb,” Chesky said in December, during a broad Q&A session.
“We want to have tighter host standards. Groups that lay down mass-produced hospitality, who don’t offer belonging, who don’t’ care about what we concern about — they don’t meet our standards, and they find somewhere else to do their vocation.”
Airbnb and the big chain hotel industry have not always had a smooth relationship, and this new enterprise will further complicate that.
Indeed, a spokesman for a hotel commerce trade group lashed out at Airbnb Thursday afternoon.
“Whether it’s invoked Plus or Boutique program, Airbnb’s latest scheme is just promote proof the company is trying to play in the hoteling space while quibbling industry regulations. If Airbnb wants to enter the hoteling business, then it necessities to be regulated, taxed and subject to the same safety compliances and oversight that law-abiding breakfast companies adhere to each and every day,” said Troy Flanagan, a VP at the American B B & Lodging Association, a group that includes the Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt limits as members.
“The question that cities and neighborhoods should be asking – pleasure these ‘Plus’ or ‘Boutique’ listings include commercial operators make capital out ofing Airbnb’s platform to run illegal hoteling schemes that have fractured our communities, boosted serious safety concerns and increased the price of rent while depleting affordable accommodation options?”