Skift Take
A prudent strategy for Airbnb might be to initially partner with an online travel agency in an affiliate relationship so it can access flights for its customers. In that way, Airbnb could test whether its users want to book flights on the site without taking the big risks involved in making a large acquisition, which could always come later.
The day could come when you might receive an email or text like this: "Thanks for booking your flight on Airbnb.com. Your flight booking is confirmed; please keep this confirmation code to reference your booking. Thanks for choosing Airbnb."
Alternative lodging provider Airbnb opened the cockpit door to such a possibility when it cryptically displayed a reference to "flights" in a presentation about its apps at Airbnb Open in Los Angeles last month.
As Airbnb expands beyond its core short-term rental business into tours and activities, Bloomberg reported this week that Airbnb, with a valuation of $30 billion, is mulling getting into the flights business through an acquisition or building its own product by leveraging data from airfare distributors such as Sabre, Amadeus, or Google's ITA Software.
Flight online travel agency operators, veterans of the business and an investor were unanimous when approached by Skift that Airbnb wouldn't likely be entering the flights arena, with its low margins but potentially high volumes, motivated by direct financial gains.
Instead, one Airbnb investor, who has lots of airline experience, speculated that Airbnb could use flights like Kayak does as a lead-generator for its lodging products and as a way to have greater sway over a traveler's entire budget.
"They [Airbnb] have the wherewithal to do it," the investor said, referring to acquiring an online travel agency such as New York-based CheapOair or eDreams Odigeo of Barcelona. "The question is: Do they want to do this?"
Based on eDreams Odigeo's 2017 outlook of $481 million in revenue, Airbnb might be able to acquire the company for $1.9 to $2.8 billion or so. On the other hand, arguing against this candidate, eDreams Odigeo has faced protracted controversies in Europe about its practices.
But an outright acquisition of an online travel agency like this could be detrimental to Airbnb's valuation if it "slowed their cons