The company whose early marketing told travellers to skip hotels altogether is now courting them. Airbnb has quietly added thousands of properties using a new hotel listing format — 3,939 hotels across hundreds of markets as of early September, according to data firm AirDNA. CEO Brian Chesky, who once said the platform would never list a hotel, admits he gave up on the ideology. Guests kept asking for hotels, so he started listening.
The numbers are still small relative to Airbnb's core rental business. Hotels accounted for only a single-digit percentage of nights booked in the second quarter, according to Chesky. But with the company approaching $100 billion in gross bookings annually and more than 1.6 billion devices tapping into the platform each year, even a modest hotel slice could grow into what Chesky calls one of Airbnb's next multi-billion-dollar businesses.
What's interesting is how Airbnb is going about it. Rather than replicating the Booking.com or Expedia model of listing everything, everywhere, it is curating which hotels it takes on. It is also charging hotels a lower commission than the big online travel agencies typically do, and selling them on something they can't easily buy elsewhere: access to Airbnb's enormous and distinctive guest base. Early adopters, per Skift's reporting, like the new pool of customers they're seeing. The open question is how long Airbnb can keep that supply exclusive before competitors react.
For travellers, the practical upshot is simple. Your accommodation options inside the Airbnb app are expanding beyond apartments and cabins, which means a city break could soon mean a boutique hotel booked with the same account, payment method and review system you already use. It may also nudge comparison shopping: if hotels on Airbnb carry lower fees, prices there could occasionally beat the familiar booking sites.
Who should care? Anyone who likes Airbnb's interface but prefers the reliability of a hotel — a front desk, housekeeping, a guaranteed check-in time. And anyone tracking how online travel booking consolidates: the lines between 'home sharing platform' and 'online travel agency' are blurring fast. The shift is young, the hotel count is a rounding error in travel terms, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.
