It's not just hosts who are riding Airbnb's coattails and creating businesses. Small tour operators are working with hosts to draw attention to their activities and Airbnb is quick to help them do that to give it a neighborhood-friendly image.
A startup is only as good as the real-world use case it's trying to address, and sometime it takes the support of an accelerator to discover how to do this.
How does a travel startup succeed in Zimbabwe and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa? Focus on a neglected space in a huge market. Whether startup Africabookings can make it as a business remains to be seen. The market opportunity, though, is certainly humongous.
Slack is becoming the messaging app of choice for modern work teams, and these nascent travel services are just the start. Expect more established business travel related services and new Slack-native services to crop up in coming months.