19 Hints to Airbnb’s Strategy to Become the Asset-Light Global Hospitality Brand
Photo Caption: Which parts of the global travel industry will Airbnb attack? Photo courtesy Airbnb blog.
Skift Take
Airbnb's ambitions listed here are a huge task and with its funding and right management, it may just have a chance at becoming the global leisure and hospitality brand for the millennial generation.
In a few years of its existence, Airbnb has risen to be a top 15 online travel booking site globally.
It is only a matter of time before it uses that traffic -- and its huge funding chest -- to funnel it into building a bigger position in the global travel industry that goes way beyond its sharing economy image.
But how quickly will it move beyond its current apartment and house short-term rentals? As soon as this summer, according to a long profile of the company and founder Brian Chesky, in the latest issue of Fast Company.
Based on the open and implied hints in the FastCompany story, which Airbnb cooperated with fully, we believe it is building a global hospitality brand, not unlike the likes of the largest hotel brands globally, namely Starwood, Wyndham, Accor, InterContinental, and others.
All of these hospitality companies have increasingly moved -- albeit in fits and starts -- to an "asset-light" strategy, which in essence means these companies have become brand ma
