Office visit blog 2

In my opinion the meeting with Airbnb was the best company visit from the trip. Hearing from a high level executive like Chip was helpful to understand the direction of the company. It was surprising to hear that Airbnb does not intend to compete in the same market as hotels. Considering the similarities between the two industries it was strange that they would not battle for the same consumers. However, after listening to him explain the differences between the type of guests that use the platform it started to click.

A topic that was not mentioned by chip, but was covered in the Uber site visit was the focus on the host. Airbnb is highly focused customer, whereas Uber wants to supply more drivers. I found the reasoning for the companies, who both operate in the sharing economy, to be logical, but also made me question what would happen if Airbnb took a similar approach and improved the experience for the hosts. Uber has the volume driven business model that incorporates multiple trips from the same driver in one day. Airbnb can only be used by one guest per stay and the average stay was surprisingly long. I question if Airbnb took a larger role in establishing more “superhosts” or even increasing the volume of listings, how that would play out over time. The excess capacity is still in the market, but people are not being proactive to become hosts. Even from our research, almost four times as many people use Airbnb as a consumer than as a host. If there were a way to increase the amount of hosts I believe there would be an increase in revenue from the increased options for users. This would be an interesting strategy if Airbnb were to implement it, but from the company visit it seems that they are focusing on the core “superusers” that they already have.