The ambitions of Airbnb are enormous. After acquiring Gaest.com, a platform that allows users to find and book a place for meetings, earlier this year, the company is looking for more and more potential expansions to broaden their offer. How long can be Airbnb expanding?
This month Airbnb bought HotelTonight’s last minute hotel reservation service. The application and its website, which offers daytime bookings at preferential rates, will continue to operate independently, at least for the time being. The estimated value of the company is $463 million.
Once the acquisition is completed, HotelTonight CEO Sam Shank would lead Airbnb’s hotel category. The company founded in 2010, offers deals in more than 1,700 cities and in more than 35 countries. This is another step in Airbnb expanding path towards creating an “end-to-end travel platform”.
In recent years, Airbnb has planned to get into air travel. The company hired Fred Reid, former CEO of Virgin America as Transportation Manager. This is a sign of the desire of the company to present an original offer. A few months ago, the company was interested in Skyscanner, the flight comparator that was bought at a high price by the Chinese Ctrip.
In addition to holiday rentals between individuals, hotels and excursions, Airbnb is also planning to offer boat rentals, car rentals, restaurants and more. The company also plans to go public this year as it has announced for two or three years.
Thus, it is necessary to build an even more attractive portfolio of offers to satisfy the investors. The value of Airbnb was estimated at $31 billion, which puts it in second place behind the famous hotel company Marriott ($39 billion).