8 Airbnb’s offerings beyond space – before, during and after COVID-19
8 Airbnb’s offerings beyond space – before, during and after COVID-19
Sarah Gardiner, Griffith Institute for Tourism, Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Australia
Sara Dolnicar, Department of Tourism, UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Australia
Please cite as: Gardiner, S. and Dolnicar, S. (2021) Airbnb’s offerings beyond space – before, during and after COVID-19, in S. Dolnicar (Ed.) Airbnb before, during and after COVID-19, University of Queensland DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14204546
Airbnb as an online trading platform facilitator
Airbnb has become synonymous with peer-to-peer accommodation – letting private spaces to tourists on a short-term basis. This narrow characterisation fails to capture the potential of Airbnb as a platform business (Reinhold & Dolnicar, 2017; 2021). Its nature as a platform – combined with the substantial number of network members Airbnb has attracted among both suppliers (hosts) and consumers (guests), a substantial pre-COVID-19 market share of 10% among Australians booking short-term accommodation (Roy Morgan Research, 2018), and Airbnb’s impressive brand recognition (84% likelihood of rebooking among Australians pre-COVID-19; Roy Morgan Research, 2017) – enables Airbnb to expand its activities to trade more than just accommodation. The logical step – and the one best aligned to Airbnb’s positioning – is to trade tourism-related products and services.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, some had predicted – before COVID-19 forced the global tourism industry into hibernation – that Airbnb would develop to become a one-stop shop for a wide range of travel-related services and products, selling “everything a traveller needs, including seats on planes, tours, local transport, travel insurance, travel vaccinations, and other travel-related services” (Gardiner & Dolnicar, 2018: 88-89). Before COVID-19, a number of developments suggested that this evolution was indeed taking place. The most obvious indicator was the following statement by Brian Chesky, one of the founders of Airbnb: “Homes are just one small part of a great journey […] This was the moment we realized we needed to create a holistic travel experience […] The entire trip” (Airbnb, 2017).
The first direction for expansion was Experiences, which stands at the centre of this investigation. At the same time, Airbnb also explored other expansion opportunities, such as the aviation sector. In 2014, in collaboration with KLM, Airbnb members had the opportunity to win a stay in a grounded airplane that had been converted into an apartment at Schiphol Airport (KLM, 2014). In 2016, Airbnb served as the trading platform for Lufthansa tickets (Farber, 2016; The Economist, 2016). Since then, Airbnb has also partnered with four major airlines – ANA, British Airways, Delta and Qantas – to expand its market reach by offering airline miles and points (Ziggy, 2020).
The introduction of Experien