For the past few years they've been getting into longer term rentals. Imagine as a landlord you could just hire AirBnb to manage your rental house, and they could handle making it short or long term based on demand, managing the whole thing, doing leases and buying furniture as necessary, etc.
Basically if you own a property you say "Hey AirBnb, use this to make money and give me some of it".
That is a huge addressable market, and one that is adjacent to their existing market and only getting bigger.
I found my rental on Zillow. Imagine you could hire Zillow to manage your rental house... it's an interesting idea, yet Zillow is only valued at $11B. Why not say Zillow is $100B because that's such a cool hypothetical opportunity? Because cool opportunities need to be valued at low valuations until they're more validated, so that the investors get a 100x upside if they succeed, not 10%/yr yield as the bull case.
I mean, yes, that would be great, but Airbnb do very little around the management end of things - they take bookings, manage bad situations, they provide a unified listings and ratings platform, and they provide flexible management tools - but the control is all in the hands of the host, and the advice Airbnb gives (“Opportunities”) such as “Have you considered allowing one night stays?”, “Allow free parking!” is generally in Airbnb’s interests, not the hosts’.
So, while it’s a market they could address, they don’t seem to be heading in that direction, rather, more optimisation of the current model, adjacent services (experiences, possibly dining from some mood music I’ve heard from them), and an increased focus on the higher end travel market, where margins and commissions to be earned are greater.
So, at the moment, it’s more “Hey Airbnb, I’ll use this to make money and I’ll give you some of it”, and I can’t see how they could pivot to providing a full service. Who gets called when the boiler breaks? Who handles the guest who broke a light-switch and is now in the dark? Who helps the guest who can’t figure out where to park in an unfamiliar place? The list goes on, but I think it’s these “last mile” deliverables and expectations that prevent them from getting deeper into hospitality management.
That is very interesting. Do you have a link to more info about this? The only thing I could find was where they advertise their third party property management partners, not where they do it themselves. The service you describe could be incredibly attractive and have huge potential.
Right now their platform just lets you rent for longer terms, but what I'm saying is that they could get into property management as a way to continue growing.
That's not a tech business though, you need local cleaners and handymen and locksmiths and phone lines and invoicing and... obviously that can get subcontracted, but that bites into margins and service quality.
If I were a property owner I'd prefer to build a relationship with a local business managing hundreds of apartments than an online multinational support portal based giant.
As someone who has been managing properties for 25 years, I'm well aware of that. But it's also not a far leap from "rent this house for a month" (which they already do) to "rent this house for a year".
Basically if you own a property you say "Hey AirBnb, use this to make money and give me some of it".
That is a huge addressable market, and one that is adjacent to their existing market and only getting bigger.