What's Airbnb's future as millennials move from backpacks to briefcases?
Jul 31, 2014
A small but growing amount of business travel spending is shifting to Airbnb - a trend that, if it takes hold, could pose a threat to the broad hotel business, according to a new eMarketer report, “Airbnb and Business Travelers: Gauging the Impact on the Hotel Market.”
The impact of Airbnb is limited today because the service is often used as an inexpensive lodging alternative by younger travelers. Longer term, the threat could be substantial if these young leisure travelers continue to tap Airbnb once they become regular business travelers.
Airbnb represents a rapidly growing niche of the accommodations market. According to a report by GlobalWebIndex, 8% of internet users in North America and 14% worldwide had rented rooms or apartments through a home and lodging rentals service in Q1 2014.
Though US business travel use of Airbnb is currently a small portion of the more than $280 billion in spending forecast for 2014, expenditure is on the rise, driven by unmanaged business travelers and forward-thinking corporate travel departments. Mike Hilton, executive vice president at Concur, a company that processes $50 billion worth of corporate expense reports a year, told the San Francisco Chronicle that use of Airbnb had quadrupled every year since 2010, with the company expected to process $1 million of Airbnb expenses in Q1 2014. Michael Tangney, global travel manager at Google, told attendees at the 2014 PhoCusWright Europe conference that the company’s employees had spent $2 million on Airbnb rentals last year.
Get the full story at eMarketer
