Accommodation
The story of how Airbnb started
Airbnb is, to put it simply, a room-letting website. A website that was just valued at 1.3 billion dollars.
Anyone, anywhere in the world, can list unique spaces. From a simple spare room in a family home, to a historic French chateau, travellers using Airbnb can log on and book a night in someone else’s home.
Airbnb also offers a professional photographer, deals with the money and provides a 24/7 customer support service, including $1 million insurance for the host. To date, the company has had more than 10 million nights booked in more than 19,000 cities in 192 countries, mostly in Europe.
It is now so popular that every two seconds someone books an Airbnb room.
So how did it start?
In 2007, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, then both 27, were living together and struggling to pay their rent. There was a design conference coming to San Francisco and the city’s hotels were fully booked, so the two young entrepreneurs saw that they could offer something that no one else was. They came up with the idea of renting out three airbeds on their living-room floor and cooking their guests breakfast. They advertised the deal on a website they made called airbedandbreakfast.com and six days later they had a 30-year-old Indian man, a 35-year-old woman from Boston and a 45-year-old father of four from Utah sleeping on their floor. They charged each guest $80 each a night.
To Joe and Brian, the idea of creating a website based on renting something that was already in existence was perfect. They decided to target conferences and festivals across America, in locations where hotels were likely booked out at the time and no longer an option. They encouraged local residents to list their rooms on the website and travellers to book them. The website itself was built by Nathan Blecharczyk, 29, a computer science graduate who had funded his Harvard college fees with the proceeds of an internet software business he founded when he was 14.
A few PR stunts down the track grabbed the attention of big investors, including actor Ashton Kutcher (who actually sits on the board of advisors).
By January last year the company had had one million bookings; by July that year it had had more than two million; at the end of 2011 it had had five million and in June it hit 10 million. Over the past 12 months the site has grown by 400 per cent, and Airbnb says it expects to maintain a similar rate of growth over the next 12 months.
The average age of Airbnb users is also older than you might expect.
“We’ve got more people aged 55 and over on the site than those aged 18-25, who only make up seven per cent of the site”, Brian Chesky said in interview with The Telegrpah.
“We’re helping people be more resourceful with the space they already have and we’re connecting people around the world. We can see ourselves doing this for a decade to come – a generation.”
If you're interested in becoming a host, find out more information here.
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