Airbnb brought the whirlwind of change in the hospitality sector and become one of the most curious data discussed across the globe.

 

• The Beginning Of Airbnb Success Story

Two young folks, Nathan and Joe were roommates in an apartment located in San Francisco. And the rent of this apartment was increased to 25% in Oct 2007. The rise in rent made Nathan leave the apartment. At the same time, Brian- a friend of Joe planned to shift from Los Angeles to San Francisco to be an entrepreneur. But he only had $1000 after quitting his job in Los Angeles and the apartment rent was $1150.

 

Facing a math problem, two of them-Brian and Joe who were designers noticed a design conference (Industrial Design Society of America) was happening in San Francisco. They decided to get some leads to earning money by participating in this conference. But as they saw all the hotels recommended and affiliated for this conference was sold out, they thought to serve air beds and breakfast for the event participants.

 

This is where the idea of airbed&breakfast.com was initiated that was solely for participants of the listed events! They discovered a way of making friends while also making money.

 

Joe and Brian created a very simple webpage of just a blog to advertise and also wrote to many local bloggers for the backlinks. By doing this, they had three people who booked the air bed and breakfast.

 

This was a memorable week for them as they not only earned $1000 but also served guests a city tour and were grouping at the conference with the guest. It was an unnoticed thing happening during this time which we call it ‘wonderful friendships’.

 

• When the idea was made live

Fast-forwarding to a couple of months, in January 2008, Nathan also quit his job and all the three jobless people decided to start a business. What they had in mind was there must be other people in different situations where the concept of offering air bed & breakfast can work well.

 

Within three weeks, they developed a website airbed&breakfast.com that had a few web pages designed as a simple directory of events where the local people can list their spare bedroom only for particular events, and those coming from out of town could look it up and talk to these locals to book an air bed and breakfast.

 

Approx a dozen properties get listed in airbed&breakfast.com and only two to three people booked the homestay.

 

This ‘no response phase’ was a big push of AirBnB success story.

 

Not giving up! They thought to upgrade the app. They made revisions in the payment system with the booking payments to be done upfront rather than making the hosts insecure about receiving payments while they serve hospitality to their guests.

 

And in the summer of 2008, this made them revise the airbed&breakfast.com with some more updates. To make it seamless ‘three clicks to book a homestay’ for people just like that of a hotel and not restricted to only event participants.

 

They thought to launch this new version of the website three months before an event ‘Democratic National Convention’ that was going to happen in August 2008 where Barack Obama was going to receive the democratic party’s nomination for the presidency.

 

• Bringing The Change

Despite fewer hopes, the team spirit was still high and they felt they have not given their 100% energies to the business.

 

A beautiful start of ‘success’ in Airbnb success story.

 

Things completely began to change as these three crazy entrepreneurs got hyper-focused on their targets.

 

Meantime they got great advice from one of the investors who asked them where are the users located?

 

With most of the users being from New York, the advice was to go to New York and meet all the users.

 

They visited New York and met the users. This made them notice the hosts had posted blurred and bad photos of listed properties on the website.

 

So Brian and Joe went to each host and clicked beautiful photos to upload on the website and wrote attractive descriptions for hosts to add it to their profile.

 

• The Victory

As a result of uploading high-quality photos, improving the profile descriptions, lower prices, and a group of cooperative hosts who wanted this idea to succeed.

 

They suddenly had a rich and unique product – A complete vacation rental and trip platform!

Airbnb Guests from around the world started booking homestays in New York and the Airbnb hosts started making money.

 

Effortless marketing started happening with hosts spreading brand awareness through word of mouth explaining their money earnings simply by listing the spare properties.

 

Their friends and friends of friends started listing properties that were located at different places in the world.

 

There were cases where the guest became the AirBNB host themselves after coming back from a lovely experienced homestay booked on the Airbnb website.

 

And bang on! The concept started to propagate. And this is how the AirBNB success story witnessed its first major victory.

 

Properties on the Airbnb website started popping up from Barcelona, Berlin, Hongkong, and all around the world. Today it’s 6,00,000 properties in 192 countries that are listed on the Airbnb website and highly booked by the guests.

 

It took 4 years to get the first ‘one million’ guests. And with much of a surprise, in the year 2013, they served 7 million additional guests. Raising the numbers to 11 million AirBNB guest bookings at present.

 

• Creating the new benchmark to prosper

Airbnb is planning for providing transformative benefits of personal, local, and authentic travel to every traveler’s tribe.
 

• Future plan heads with all personalization which includes offering new travel categories where people can book a vacation home, unique home, bed & breakfast, or Boutiques along with the currently offered categories of a private room, entire home, and shared space.
   
• The team is planning to launch new tires- AirBnB Plus (for quality assured homestay) and Beyond by Airbnb ( custom designed trips with world-class hospitality)
   
• Superhost program and new guest membership program are planned to be launched in 2019.The future of Airbnb is all focused to offer ultra-fancy luxury travel categories for every occasion and any type of a homestay.
   
• On August 19, 2020, Airbnb announced that it had filed for an initial public offering. The company has been privately valued at $31 billion.
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Source: Trootech