Airbnb Offers New Tech Support to Entice More Professional Hosts
Photo Credit: Airbnb is making a concerted effort to promote its tools for professional hosts, from hotels and vacation rental property managers to landlords. Airbnb
Skift Take
This move makes plenty of sense but we — presumably like those very people who want to use Airbnb to list their properties — wish Airbnb was a bit more forthcoming with actual new tools.
Homesharing giant Airbnb knows that if it wants to remain dominant in its space, especially amid growing competition from rivals such as Booking.com and Expedia's HomeAway, it needs to grow its number of listings beyond the more than five million it has today.
That's why, in the past year, the company has expanded its outreach beyond the occasional host, or the person simply looking to "make ends meet," to professional hosts, from boutique hotels and vacation rental managers and management companies and even to landlords of apartment buildings.
But reaching out to these suppliers is one thing; offering them both the tools and the access to make it easier and more profitable to list on the Airbnb platform is another.
On Friday, the company announced the debut of a new set of content and resource tools for professional hosts and a new Preferred Software Partner program.
The new content and resource tools are housed on a new landing page
