An inappropriate interjection by Carsten Hennig
In retrospect, many were more fortunate: currently, in the hot summer of 2017, the excellence of this multi-billion dollar system became evident. In major cities including Berlin and Zurich, the Airbnb Hospitality Group, as it was to be predicted only a couple of years later, had over twice as many beds on offer as the old hotels. Mocked as a “para hospitality” at the time, the earliest statistical surveys revealed the uncanny marketability of the non-real estate group, which was to become the world’s biggest mattress supplier with different takeovers around twenty years following its unbelievable base in a Californian garage – according to the PR story. The recent takeover of this last remaining resort conglomerate HNA Hospitality, that includes InterContinential, Wyndham, Hyatt and Choice along with different European resort chains, marks just a temporary highlight of this technologically driven triumphal march.
Analysts warned governments and shareholders of property investors – Airbnb always managed to avoid going people and made every ancient investor a multi-billionaire – regarding the risks, but almost everyone overlooked the exceptionally disruptive center of the strategy: commercial portfolio, i. e. special properties like business resorts, was sold off as much as possible or converted to private apartment buildings. The market size of a “metropolitan marketplace coverage” – the talk of residential space in streets and districts that can be leased as beds for guests – has now reached almost ninety percent in megacities such as Washington D. C. -Baltimore Philadelphia-NYC. The exact number of overnight stays – beds in apartments, single rooms or shared flats very similar to former private hotels – remains unknown, as well as the exact figures of mediated overnight stays or even commissions and the quantity of external sales.
The first sign of the unstoppable overwhelming superiority could also have been such side notes in 2018: graduates of well-known hotel universities that, after finishing their expensive management studies, moved into business for themselves in Lausanne, among other areas, using an assortment of student apartments pre-financed by their own parents – and a few years after the foundation of their startup company, former fellow students started working for their decentralised bedding area.
Another sign of Airbnb’s ever-changing growth might have been the fact that in 2019, the market award of this “Real Hospitality Leader”, that was still laughed at the time, could have been given to some young Airbnb lessor, together with the offshoot of some long-established hotelier family from Austria. For the very first time, it was not a newcomer to the conservative hotel sector which has been honoured, but an entrepreneur of this “new bedding sector”. But this was preceded by a history: as early as 2016, his small business angel, a renowned hotel professor from Germany, uttered the very first “Airbnb Hotel” at Vienna, at the time still called the “Grätzl Hotel” with decentralised stores as dormitories and a fundamental café as reception in an old quarter of the Austrian capital. The “Real Hospitality Leaders” award has thus gained worldwide recognition and a great reputation.
It was just on the so-called “Black Friday”, as 28 February 2020 was to return in the annals of business history, that it became clear to everybody what the situation would be: for the very first time and after, Airbnb’s administration had declared figures and data from its empire, overwhelming evidence for its lasting success of its own swarm model to form a very powerful booking centre from thousands and thousands of independent landlords. The share prices of “Marwood” & Co., the largest hotel providers in the front of the Chinese persecutors at the time, had ruthlessly rushed into the cellar on this Black Friday for hotel industry and were not again to reach the averages achieved up to now. At that time there was barely any evidence of this, and also the couple were difficult to comprehend even for seasoned industry specialists, in order to have the ability to sell off the old shares of the official hotel business in good time. The losses of traditional investors and their weakening for the following years strengthened Airbnb’s daring investors all of the more – with known consequences.
Airbnb Hospitality has also opened up the formerly isolated world of real estate investors: what was formerly a business of high fund or the very best offshoot of private investors is now the world’s future for millions of home builders. Anyone who’d entered into a partnership with Airbnb as a landlord by the end of 2019 could rely on a lifelong commission model of just three percent. Later Airbnb business partners must deduct a mean of 7.5 to 9 percent of their overnight stay turnover, which is managed easily by Airbnb’s own digital lender (and also local tourism taxes and income taxes are split).
August 2028 – At the Airbnb Partner Congress, to which more than 10,000 landlords and successful intermediaries were invited into the Chinese industry metropolis Guangzhou, the world premiere of a travel musical specially staged for the business’s 30-year history, that has been popular in tourism marketing for years, was scheduled. Later, the most elaborately choreographed and composed by the best film music designers, the point play will go on tour globally, with content adapted to the Airbnb destinations most often booked. This illustrates one of the travelling company’s amazing secrets: to market the destination concerning authenticity, experience, occasion and culinary joys. This was something that the previous providers of resorts had already lost sight of in 2018, ten years following the start of Airbnb. With known consequences…
About the author: Carsten Hennig, born in 1970, has been committed to top hotels and gastronomy for 20 years as a close audience. The visionary omissions always hide a true core that attentive readers comprehend and draw their own conclusions from.
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