The Startup Businesses Built Around the Airbnb Ecosystem
Skift Take
Airbnb is either quietly building out host services for launch or keeping tabs of the growing crop of startups, which are ripe for acquisition once their product is stabilized and customer base large.
Airbnb, most recently valued at $13 billion, has created an ecosystem of startups looking to cash in on the company's success by offering services to hosts and guests, both of whom are becoming more sophisticated in how they operate their rentals and what they expect out of a stay.
Similar to the way that Salesforce's success led to a partner community of consultants and app vendors or how the App Store spawned the billion-dollar app economy, Airbnb's business has paved the way for startups that make hosting easier and more lucrative by handling guest communication, cleaning services, key swaps, and price automation.
Former Expedia CEO, active travel startup investor, and Couchsurfing chairman Erik Blachford describes these services, which target hosts across the home-sharing market as “shadow hospitality infrastructure that allow hosts to offer up a more professional type of stay and allow stays to be a little more consistent across various listings and cities.”
Airbnb's Startup Ecosystem
Airbnb formally recognized hosts' desires for more services and features when, following its redesign in July, it announced a program to celebrate superhosts and analytics tools for measuring performance.
However, it has yet to build out these services itself or identify preferred ope
