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AirBNB Is Stealing Corporate Travel & Hotels Have Every Reason to Be Worried

AirBNB is expanding into the business travel market — here’s why hotels should be worried.

It’s been a pretty great year for both AirBNB and hotel companies so far. The casual lodging website just secured $1.5 billion in new funding and has a $25.2 billion valuation, while hotels are reporting record-breaking highs for average room rates, the money made from each room and occupancy. Yet despite the promising outlook, hotels have a new reason to worry — AirBNB for Business.

AirBNB for Business, launched July 20, tailors the existing AirBNB site for business travelers seeking hotel alternatives. The business travel arena has long been dominated by traditional hotels, but now, AirBNB is threatening the mainstay’s position with a unique new initiative that simplifies business travel for both employees and companies, utilizing a central dashboard and billing system that makes it easy to track expenses.

Upwards of 250 companies, including Google, Vox Media and Salesforce.com, were using AirBNB for business travel prior to the launch of AirBNB for Business. According to AirBNB, about 10 percent of its bookings in recent years have been business rentals, a figure the company expects will jump with the launch of its new platform.

“Corporate travel is a big part of the travel pie; it’s worth a lot of money,” Nathan Blecharczyk, chief technology officer and co-founder of AirBNB, told Bloomberg. “We’re further along there on our leisure side than our business side.”

Mike Lewis, AirBNB’s product manager for business travel, old Bloomberg he believes the new platform will appeal to corporations because it simplifies what’s historically been “a super-manual process.”

[Photo: AirBNB]

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2 Comments
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paulwuk July 30, 2015

Simplifying expenses is a big benefit of Uber (as well as availability on 6 continents, tracking where your cab is, friendly drivers, smart cars, etc) However with hotels I get that through hotels.com anyway.

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AAJetMan July 30, 2015

Is there something special about the Airbnb accommodations that make them "corporate"?