Is Airbnb silently and strategically moving from a channel to a siloed, fully controlled marketplace? Is this an environment where capital value is hard to build for managers, capturing new hosts and businesses like a flytrap, and moderating connected longer-term PMCS opportunities?
What came first?
We have written a lengthy article on Airbnb’s long-term strategy and why we see it as a controlling mechanism with a flytrap approach to hosts and a moderator of PMC success in the future.
What came first, vacation rentals or Airbnb? The answer depends on who you ask, of course. Those born before the end of the last century may recognise a decades-old industry, while the younger consumer may think it’s a brand new concept in a world ruled by Airbnb. Increasingly, we see online narratives where Airbnb aficionados decry traditional management, and Airbnb appears to be driving this message through its technical, marketing, and business modelling.
Airbnb has a strong brand name (and millions of properties and hosts), one of its main drivers for success. The other is its process and continual transition from host love to guest adoration to increasing supply controls, all supported by substantial guest data.
Have you caught the bug? Do you need to wean yourself from the habit-forming drug through a more distributed marketing plan, or do you want to continue with the status quo, which may one day become a health hazard and hard to shake? Do you want to build business value?
This article will not reiterate how Airbnb started, its largely untrue “sharing” model, the excellent PR department, or Brian Chesky’s now old story. We are concentrating on Airbnb’s development of an aggregated and siloed ecosystem, with a primary responsibility to shareholders (not hosts). All public companies have this, but we must address their approach and the supply narrative.
The company’s responsibility to shareholders is to increase the share price and pay dividends. As the graph below shows, things are not great in that camp. The only way to improve this long term is through growth and profitability, focusing increasingly on the consumer, controlling the hosts, and expanding its footprint.