19 Hints to Airbnb's Strategy to Become the Asset-Light Global Hospitality Brand

In a few years of its existence, Airbnb has risen to be a top 15 online travel booking site globally. It is only a matter of time before it uses that traffic -- and its huge funding chest -- to funnel it into building a bigger position in the global travel industry that goes way beyond its sharing economy image. But how quickly will it move beyond its current apartment and house short-term rentals? As soon as this summer, according to a long profile of the company and founder Brian Chesky, in the latest issue of Fast Company. Based on the open and implied hints in the FastCompany story, which Airbnb cooperated with fully, we believe it is building a global hospitality brand, not unlike the likes of the largest hotel brands globally, namely Starwood, Wyndham, Accor, InterContinental, and others. All of these hospitality companies have increasingly moved -- albeit in fits and starts -- to an "asset-light" strategy, which in essence means these companies have become brand managers and standardized the services under them, while the real estate is owned by someone else. That, in essence, is what we think Airbnb is aiming to be, with the real estate being cont