Skift Take
Expedia and Priceline, watch out. Airbnb is very obviously coming for you. Today, it's bed-and-breakfasts. Tomorrow, it'll be more boutique and independent hotels.
Airbnb isn't interested, at least for the moment, in putting "mass-produced" hotel rooms on its platform, but it is expanding its accommodation choices through a new partnership.
The company has partnered with the Association of Independent Hospitality Professionals and ThinkReservations to make it easier for bed-and-breakfast owners to advertise their rooms on Airbnb, a sign of the company's bigger ambitions to grow its already large portfolio of more than 4 million listings worldwide.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has hinted that he sees more professionally managed properties joining the Airbnb community in the years to come. On November 29, during Airbnb's first Global Host Q&A session, he answered a litany of questions from thousands of Airbnb hosts around the world. The very first question in the hour-long session, in fact, perfectly aligned with the company's news about ThinkReservations today.
Chesky was asked why Airbnb is allowing commercial property agents on its site.
He said hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and other more traditional hospitality businesses shouldn't be excluded from Airbnb. However, those proprietors of "mass-produced hospitality" aren't welcome.
"We have to be more inclusive of who belong on Airbnb but there's also a flip side: Not everyone belongs on Airbnb," Chesky said. He later continued, saying, "We want to have tighter host standards. Groups that provide mass-produced hospitality, who don't offer belonging, who don't' care about what we care about — they don't meet our standards, and they find somewhere else to do their business."
Chesky said that allowing hotels and bed-and-breakfasts into the Airbnb community isn't a sign that the company is "leaving our roots" or "going commercial" in the pursuit of an initial public offering (IPO).
Instead, he said, "What would help us is to build a bigger stronger community of hosts, and that's what we are committed to. There's not some other agenda here. We are not at all leaving our roots. We have more things coming that will hopefully reinforce that."
The Deal
With today's announcement, any bed-and-breakfast that uses the ThinkReservations platform to manage its bookings can sync its inventory onto the Airbnb platform, as well as have access to guest information for any bookings made via Airbnb.
Bed-and-breakfasts and inns represent a $3.4 billion industry, and the Professional Association of Innkeepers International estimates there are 17,000 inns in the
