POLICY WATCH: AIRBNB – FROM COUCH SURFING TO CORPORATE BEHEMOTH
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n October Airbnb announced they were spending $500 million sponsoring the next five Olympics Games.
It’s a big number but they can afford it. The long-awaited floating of Airbnb on the US Stock Exchange next year is expected to value the company at $40 billion. That’s a hell of a long way from the living room of a small San Francisco apartment where company founders and roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia famously blew up their air mattresses one night back in 2008, to try and make a few extra bucks putting up desperate
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delegates to a big conference in town that had filled up all the city’s hotels. It doesn’t get much bigger for any global brand than sponsoring the Olympics. It’s a reminder of just how massive and corporate Airbnb have become. Globally Airbnb will generate $73 billion in bookings and ‘host’ 500 million guests in 2020. When it does go public it is expected to be hot on the heels of Marriot, as the world’s largest publicly traded accommodation business. We must stop looking at Airbnb as some disruptive new kid on the block bringing home sharing to
It doesn’t get much bigger for any global brand than sponsoring the Olympics. It’s a reminder of just how massive and corporate Airbnb have become.
