Airbnb News

The sharing economy has spread to every sector of the travel industry and every corner of the globe pushing it from a small community of global explorers to a full-fledged industry needing regulation and customer protection like the traditional market it sought to complement.

The Priceline Group can acquire a restaurant reservations platform in OpenTable and add tons of vacation rentals to its Booking.com unit, but Expedia Inc. plans on sticking with its guns and focusing on the hotel business. Will that focus win out? Expedia certainly has been making strides, but this is still the beginning of the beginning.

Everyone loves the concept of the sharing economy, but when it comes close to home, feelings about it are a lot more nuanced. Lots more research needs to be done at the local and neighborhood level on the effects of the sharing economy, positive and negative.

The traveling public is ready for a rolling container hotel caravan sold through Airbnb, but there's a lot of moving parts to get this up and running.

A fascinating peek into how user reviews get changed in a sharing economy platform site like Airbnb, but this paper leaves the possibility of tons more research that could be done from here.

Airbnb is still hoping to deal with cities on its own terms, but New York City doesn't appear to want to play ball.

Whether it's a spending study that says how much Airbnb contributes to a community or a campaign like this, Airbnb excels at community-minded moves that are squarely focused on its bottom line first.

Airbnb needs to figure out a way to work neighbors into the equation.

The new relationship shifts some of the responsibility of informing and educating hosts to Airbnb, which can use its platform to ensure they comply. This is a model that will likely be copied in other markets looking to legitimize the short-term rental economy.