Airbnb’s hotel ambitions are nothing new. The HotelTonight acquisition in 2019 was widely seen as the turning point, before the pandemic put everything on pause. Now the company is back at it, with a pilot program and senior talent in place. Call me cynical, but the timing doesn’t feel accidental. Short-term rental regulations are tightening across major cities, and Airbnb’s sellable inventory is shrinking.
In test markets like Madrid, Los Angeles, and New York, Airbnb is more aggressively contracting and presenting hotel inventory. The platform appears to be moving toward a more unified accommodations experience. In short-term-rental-starved New York, hotel listings now show up front and center alongside traditional Airbnb inventory.
Airbnb has quietly formalized hotels as a real vertical. Jesse Stein, previously focused on real estate, has taken on a newly created Head of Hotels role, signaling this is now an owned business line, not a side project. Add in Jim Alderman, former CEO of Radisson Hotel Group Americas, now working on hotel supply and growth.
The clearest signal, at least to me, is the hiring of Lou Zameryka, a friend to many in this industry and a loyal Hawaiʻi Hotel Hui subscriber 😁. Lou helped build Booking.com’s hotel business and announced just last week that he is putting aside his entrepreneurial pursuits to focus on growing Airbnb’s hotel business as their new Head of Global Hotels.
Layer in the hiring of CTO Ahmad Al-Dahle, formerly of Apple and Meta, and the AI angle sharpens. Beyond improving Airbnb’s core business, AI could help the company leapfrog the legacy systems that continue to slow hotel distribution.
Recent reports also suggest Airbnb is offering lower commission rates than Expedia and Booking and is not bidding against hotels on Google or metasearch, at least for now😉.
Good luck, Lou, and please keep those commissions low and the marketing organic.
