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Airbnb Creates a Role in the World of Business Travel

Business Travelers Prefer Airbnbs Over Hotels

Airbnb continues to rise in the ranks in the hotel industry.

This is further proven by reports from Certify, the expense software company, saying that the business travel segment of Airbnb is growing. Further research into where Airbnb users and business travelers were staying reveals that Airbnb had accommodated more than two times their average stays during the first half of 2015. They also learned that Airbnb guests often stayed longer than those booked in hotels, as they spent an average of 3.8 nights in Airbnb accommodations compared to the 2.1 nights in hotels. This also meant that Airbnb travelers have increased spending per stay, which only served to contribute to the growing spending among business travelers.

Extended stays with Airbnb are solid proof that travelers enjoy a better experience. This is also supported by Certify’s survey results, showing travelers rating Airbnb with 4.72 stars versus the 4.04-star rating out of five for hotels.

 

Airbnb Ventures Into the $300B Business Travel Industry

Airbnb is a favorite among business travelers, which is why the company is developing a product suite to accommodate this booming market.

The product suite incorporates dashboard and central billing features that prove useful to travel managers who want to monitor spending and itineraries among their employees. The online accommodation marketplace has already launched an unpolished version of this system in 2014 and received inquiries about the project from over 250 companies. Even Facebook, Google, TBWA, and Salesforce were also interested in the system for their traveling executives. Airbnb reported that after the system was first used last July, the business program effortlessly grew by 700%. This is expected to grow even more after its global launch.

Bloomberg also reported that 10% of Airbnb’s rentals comes from business travelers. Travel spending is expected to grow to $302.7 billion before 2015 ends and to rise by 5% in 2016, based on a study conducted by Global Business Travel Association. It’s no wonder Airbnb is eyeing this rising niche.

Airbnb is aiming to be the primary service provider to this emerging market. They already have an advantage of being favored by a large chunk of the business traveling population.  In fact, Certify, an expense software company, reported that Airbnb users often have extended hotel stays and vacations. These reports only seemed to support the idea that Airbnb may bloom into a $24-billion company after seven years in the business. This makes the company more lucrative than giant hotel chains such as Starwood Hotels and Resorts or Marriott International.

 

Airbnb and Uber To Follow in Apple’s Footsteps in Attracting Corporate Clients

Silicon Valley startups are among the biggest consumers of accommodations and rides. This is immediately reflected in how Airbnb, the rising accommodation company, and Uber, the international transportation company, rose to the top with the $10 billion valuation for Airbnb and $18.2 billion for Uber.

These companies still have to accomplish a lot to realize these valuations. This is the main force behind their motivation to target corporate clients, which is what Apple did.

Airbnb and Uber just announced that they are both developing solutions to accommodate reservations and dispense receipts through Concur, the popular corporate software used to sort out expenses. If they make it easier to do business with these corporate customers, they would have a chance to expand their clientele and fatten up their accounts.

Before, enterprise business acquisitions were the responsibility of sales teams. Oracle is a good example of a business growing based on its aggressive offers, aside from its good software. However, Apple took a unique approach by letting their consumers speak for their products. When iPhone users started using their own phones at work despite the preferred IT requirements of their company, the companies were left with no choice but to acknowledge that the best tools for their employees are those that they personally liked using as well.

This also happened to Dropbox and Evernote, with the employees preferring to use these apps as their go-to storage and productivity tools at work. In fact, Dropbox ranked third among the most valued startups after Uber and Airbnb. Now, they are trying to close a deal with corporate customers by convincing them that their employees have Dropbox accounts already.

What Apple and Dropbox did set a path for Airbnb and Uber. Now, they can capitalize on the usefulness of their services to business customers. It would be easier for them to convince these customers because they are cheaper, more flexible, and more user-friendly. This is on top of the fact that accounting departments are likely sorting through a lot of PDF and printed receipts from their employees. It is up to Airbnb and Uber to develop solutions that will give the reins over the spending to the employers while allowing the employees the joy of using their preferred services. If Airbnb and Uber’s campaigns work, you can expect more startups to the same path to increase their profits from corporate customers, too.

 

 

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