Homesharing is how Airbnb got its start, with a couple of air mattresses on the floor of the San Francisco apartment CEO Brian Chesky and co-founder Joe Gebbia shared back in 2008.
Ten years later, however, it’s fair to say that the majority of Airbnb’s 4.5 million listings are not for air mattresses anymore. And as executives spelled out Thursday, Airbnb is planning for major long-term growth, with greater integration of hotels, the addition of professional standards, a new loyalty program, and other tweaks that signal the company is growing up.
But even as homesharing moves to its own neighborhood on the Airbnb platform — now categorized as a “social stay” — one co-founder insists the company is not abandoning that original concept or losing its identity.
“A consistent theme throughout everything we do is that we’ve been creating experiences that are unique, local, and authentic. Most often that is delivered by individuals who, before Airbnb, had no background in hospitality, and that’s traditional homesharing,” said Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb co-founder and Airbnb China chairman. “We also acknowledge, though, that there are a lot of great bed-and-breakfasts, and even boutique hotels, that can also meet this criteria. That is on the margins of our core business, which is homesharing.”
As one of the most disruptive forces in travel in the past decade, especially in lodging, Airbnb has reshaped the travel experience for millions of people around the world. It’s helped to normalize the concept of couchsurfing, or homesharing, and it reset travelers’ expectations for what an accommodation could be. Like Uber, it’s become a verb, one that describes a particular way to travel with the implication that you’re “living like a local” and that you can “belong anywhere.”
And Airbnb has proven to be a rare breed among tech unicorns — a company that’s actually profitable, even if it’s been taking some losses in its tours and activities business.
