Skift Take
If Airbnb hasn't already devoted resources anew to HotelTonight and expanding its hotel business, the short-term rental giant assuredly will once it goes public. After all, in addition to Google, Airbnb sees online travel agencies, with their wide breadth of accommodations' offerings, as its most significant set of competitors.
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Airbnb made nearly two dozen acquisitions since its founding 13 years ago, and the largest and most important was HotelTonight for $441.4 million in cash and stock in 2019.
Since 2017 through the first nine months of 2020, Airbnb bought about 10 startups, according to its announcements, and Airbnb's S-1 statement cited acquisition costs of $808.9 million during this period. With travel collapsing in the spring of 2020, Airbnb didn't acquire any companies this year.
The following is a partial list of Airbnb's acquisitions and total acquisition costs since 2017 with some so small that there names weren't mentioned in the company's initial public offering registration statement. For example, in 2019 in addition to HotelTonight, Airbnb merely said it made "two business combinations," which we believe were for Urbandoor and Gaest, for a total of $63.3 million.
Airbnb Acquisitions 2017 to 2019
Acquisition
Year
Price
Luxury Retreats
2017
$224.1M
Others
2017
$39.8M
Various
2018
$40.3M
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