Airbnb Strikes Deal to Make a Bigger Hotel Push

If there were any doubt as to Airbnb's true intentions of competing with online travel agency giants such as Booking.com or Expedia, they need to be laid to rest immediately. Wednesday, the $31 billion company announced the formation of a technology partnership with SiteMinder, a cloud-based hotel distribution platform used by more than 28,000 hotels around the world. Now, hotels that use SiteMinder and meet certain criteria from Airbnb can easily list their inventory, including real-time availability, rates, and content, on Airbnb thanks to new technology that both parties have developed together. It's still not entirely clear what criteria hotels will have to meet. But we expect that as long as a hotel isn't considered a proprietor of "mass-produced hospitality" — as Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has said publicly in previous discussions — it will be allowed to list its rooms on Airbnb. In a press statement announcing the new partnership, Airbnb said: "Guests can expect the l