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HotelTonight Investors See Huge Gains on Airbnb IPO

Dennis Schaal photo
Dennis Schaal

Photo Credit: Sam Shank (left), Airbnb head of hotels and HotelTonight CEO, speaks at Skift Global Forum in New York City on Sept. 19, 2019. Skift

Skift Take

You can't make this stuff up. Airbnb's payout to HotelTonight of 3.2 million shares didn't appear very attractive when Airbnb's business almost collapsed in the spring. On paper, though, it's all looking very good right now.

When Airbnb acquired HotelTonight in 2019 for what Skift described as "more than $400 million," with about half in stock, the exit appeared to be humbling for the much-hyped startup. Consider, too, what HotelTonight investors and management must have thought in the spring of 2020 when Airbnb took its potential IPO back into a drawer, and then the homesharing giant's revenue dropped about 80 percent. But there's nothing like a record-setting IPO — the largest travel company stock market debut in history and the largest IPO of the year — to turn around a narrat

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