checkAd

    Air Bnb - kommt der Börsengang? - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

    eröffnet am 24.03.16 15:39:48 von
    neuester Beitrag 18.07.18 16:35:28 von
    Beiträge: 22
    ID: 1.228.931
    Aufrufe heute: 0
    Gesamt: 3.745
    Aktive User: 0


     Durchsuchen

    Begriffe und/oder Benutzer

     

    Top-Postings

     Ja Nein
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 15:39:48
      Beitrag Nr. 1 ()
      ...da sie für die weitere Branchenentwicklung wohl eine wichtige rolle spielen dürften lege ich mal diesen Thread an, um einige Daten zu sammeln.

      Peergroup zu Priceline, Expedia, TripAdvisor, etc.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 15:44:05
      Beitrag Nr. 2 ()
      Exclusive: Airbnb to double bookings to 80 million this year - investors
      Technology | Mon Sep 28, 2015
      SAN FRANCISCO | BY HEATHER SOMERVILLE

      http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-growth-idUSKCN0RS2Q…

      Airbnb is expected to double its nightly bookings this year, investors familiar with the company's performance said, a sign that the home and room renting site's battles with regulators have yet to dent its rapid global growth.

      The website is expected to have about 80 million nights booked this year, up from about 40 million in 2014, according to the investors, who declined to be named.

      Airbnb does not disclose nightly bookings and would not comment on the figure.

      This pace of growth is expected to continue or accelerate, the investors said. The company says it has more than 1.5 million listings - homes, apartments, guest rooms, even houseboats and tree houses - in more than 34,000 cities in 190 countries.

      "It's a global phenom," said Keith Rabois, a partner at Khosla Ventures who made an early personal investment in Airbnb in 2010. "(It) is going to continue to grow at a substantially higher rate than other businesses."

      Unlike hotels, Airbnb does not own properties and is not responsible for services like housekeeping.

      The research arm of investment bank Piper Jaffray estimated earlier this year that the service would have about 61 million nightly bookings in 2015. But the company has blown past that estimate, the investors said.

      Its growth comes despite Airbnb's ongoing battle with regulators and lawmakers over who can list properties and how they should be zoned and taxed.

      In its hometown of San Francisco, a proposed law on the November ballot would limit the use of homes as hotels through services such as Airbnb. Supporters of the law argue that Airbnb exacerbates the city's brutal housing shortage.

      Some travelers prefer to use Airbnb not just for the cheaper price but also options such as renting an entire house, enjoying quiet neighborhoods lacking in hotels and benefiting from their host's local knowledge.

      Travel industry analysts say the growth rate suggests Airbnb's push in Europe and efforts to win over business travelers are succeeding.

      "Airbnb is certainly being very, very aggressive," said Henry Harteveldt, founder of travel research firm Atmosphere Research Group.

      Paris has more listings on Airbnb - about 60,000 - than any other city, said an Airbnb spokeswoman. About 50 percent of the company's revenue comes from Europe compared to about 30 percent from the United States.

      Some homeowners in European cities have reported receiving letters from Airbnb inviting them to list their homes on the site.

      The company is also going after the booming Chinese travel market, working with Sequoia China, the local affiliate of the American venture capital firm.

      Once a startup selling cereal, Airbnb today is the third most valuable venture capital-backed company in the world, valued at $25.5 billion. By comparison, Hyatt Hotels Corp (H.N) has a market value of about $6.7 billion.

      In a survey of 300 hotel groups and hotels earlier this year by Atmosphere, 70 percent said Airbnb and similar home-sharing services would pose a significant threat to their business within the next three years.

      "If Airbnb is on track to book 80 million rooms nights a year, that is 80 million room nights that the global hotel industry is not getting," Harteveldt said.
      3 Antworten
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 15:45:25
      Beitrag Nr. 3 ()
      Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 52.054.613 von R-BgO am 24.03.16 15:44:05
      Inzwischen sind es laut Webseite bereits 2 Mio. Listings,
      sie chargen 3% für den Anbieter und 6-12% für den Kunden.
      1 Antwort
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 15:54:17
      Beitrag Nr. 4 ()
      Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 52.054.613 von R-BgO am 24.03.16 15:44:05https://skift.com/2015/11/23/airbnb-revenue-now-larger-than-…

      Auszüge:

      "...indicated that Airbnb transacted $2.2 billion in gross bookings during the third quarter, generating $340 million in revenue. Room nights sold during the quarter jumped 110.6 percent to 23.8 million, according to Airbnb’s presentation."

      "...projected $150 million operating loss for 2015"

      "...In terms of room nights booked, Airbnb’s 23.8 million in the third quarter stood as 38.7 percent of Expedia’s 61.5 million room nights and 20.5 percent of the Priceline Group’s 115.6 million room nights.

      That’s why Expedia Inc. is acquiring HomeAway, the Priceline Group is touting its 21 million bookable rooms, and Wall Street analysts are questioning hotel-chain CEOs on the prospect of selling hotel rooms through Airbnb, a scenario that would have been considered laughable a couple of years ago."
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 17:44:31
      Beitrag Nr. 5 ()
      Wird bestimmt viel zu teuer auf den Markt kommen. Das Übernachten bei "Freunden" ist eine Nische und hat regulatorische Probleme, der Rest des Marktes viel Konkurrenz und auch Priceline hat mit Villas.com da ein gutes Angebit

      Trading Spotlight

      Anzeige
      Rallye II. – Neuer Anstoß, News und was die Börsencommunity jetzt nicht verpassen will…mehr zur Aktie »
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 19:03:10
      Beitrag Nr. 6 ()
      Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 52.054.619 von R-BgO am 24.03.16 15:45:25Im Moment zwar eher vernachlässigter, aber möglicherweise später mal interessant: Zinserträge.

      Denn wenn ich heute über AirBNB buche, dann muß ich sofort zahlen, auch wenn ich erst im Sommer oder Herbst verreise.

      Da dürften in Summe Milliardenbeträge zusammenkommen, die AirBNB auf eigene Rechnung anlegen kann.

      Und wenn es jemals wieder Zinsen geben sollte (außerhalb Europas gibt es so etwas ja noch), dann rechnet sich das zusätzlich.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.03.16 22:22:25
      Beitrag Nr. 7 ()
      Feeling the heat because of all the buzz about Airbnb’s global growth trajectory with its more than 2 million listings, Booking.com for the first time has released its own room tallies: 21 million bookable rooms.

      Until now, Booking.com merely reported its number of properties, currently 824,231, and not the number of bookable rooms. The company hadn’t talked much about apartment and condo rentals but Skift pointed out last month that Airbnb Needs to Watch Out for Booking.com’s Apartment Ambitions.

      Here’s the room breakdown: Booking.com’s numbers-crunchers identified on the site 14.4 million bookable hotel rooms, 1.8 million vacation rental rooms and 4.8 million rooms in other types of lodging, including apartments, villas, chalets, bed & breakfasts, guest houses, boats, igloos, tree houses and farm stays.

      While Silicon Valley and others rave about the expansion and mainstreaming of Airbnb, with its purported 2 million listings in 190 countries, and 60 million guests, Booking.com reports that its own “unique accommodations properties” (everything beyond its hotels and vacation rentals) increased 32 percent and accommodated 137 million guests over the last 12 months.

      Booking.com states the number of vacation rentals on its site increased 66 percent to 1.8 million in the last 12 months.

      That would make Booking.com, which is the growth-driver in the Priceline Group, a much larger lodging provider than Airbnb by just about every measure.

      However, Booking.com, which was founded in 1996, is a senior citizen compared with 7-year-old Airbnb.

      Still, on the growth front, there were some momentum questions in the Priceline Group’s third quarter of 2015 results. Room night growth decelerated in third quarter of 2015 to 22 percent, down from 26.7 percent in the third quarter of 2014 and 26.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015.


      Apples to Apples?

      Apples to apples comparisons when assessing the girth of lodging sites are really tough.

      Booking.com believes that 4.8 million bookable rooms in “unique categories of places to stay,” albeit everything beyond hotels and vacation rentals, is the closest comparison that can be made to Airbnb’s 2 million-plus listings.

      But there are still lots of differences in inventory types and geographies between Booking.com, Airbnb and HomeAway. For example, Booking.com is more Europe-focused while Airbnb’s and HomeAway’s strengths are still in the U.S.

      Sites such as Expedia and HomeAway, which announced last week that they will merge, don’t detail room numbers. Neither does Airbnb, which is trying to expand beyond apartments and into vacation rentals.

      In a Skift interview last week, HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples said comparing HomeAway’s and Airbnb’s property numbers are “meaningless in a way.”

      “Yes, I mean, it’s meaningless in a way because it’s tough to compare one number to another,” Sharples said. “For example, in the case of Airbnb, 90-plus percent of their supply is primary homes that people live in that they’re sharing with others, and in the case of HomeAway, 95 percent of what we have are second homes that are set up for vacation rental travelers so the fact that one has more than the other is about as relevant as trying to compare Wal-Mart and Nordstrom based on the number of SKUs they have. They’re completely different SKUs.”

      The combined Expedia-HomeAway would have considerably more properties than Booking.com: 1.5 million versus 824,000. HomeAway counts 1.2 million properties on its sites and most are “whole homes” so its unknown how Expedia-HomeAway would stack up against Booking.com in room counts.

      TripAdvisor’s FlipKey states it “features 300,000 vacation homes and rooms located in over 11,000 cities throughout the world.”


      Why Are Room and Property Numbers Important?

      From a consumer perspective, in any given destination travelers want comprehensiveness in types of properties, lots of choice and availability, and a competitive rate environment.

      From an industry perspective, online booking sites need to show momentum and please investors, seek large numbers of properties to drive consumer demand for lodging partners, and the sites can generate marketing power and efficiencies by getting larger.

      As the Priceline Group stated in its 10-K report on February 19: “We believe that the increase in the number of accommodation providers that participate on our websites, and the corresponding access to accommodation room nights, has been a key driver of the growth of our accommodation reservation business. The growth in our accommodation bookings typically makes us an attractive source of consumer demand for our accommodation providers.”


      Instantly Confirmable

      If Booking.com’s growth numbers in vacation rentals and apartment-like inventory are robust, the company is also differentiating itself from Airbnb, HomeAway and TripAdvisor/FlipKey on several fronts.

      Unlike its competitors, Booking.com states it doesn’t charge guests a booking fee. Starting in the second quarter of 2016, HomeAway will for the first time will start charging guests a 6 percent booking fee on average. Airbnb charges 6 to 12 percent and TripAdvisor/FlipKey charges guests 5 to 15 percent.

      While HomeAway and other sites give hosts 24 hours to confirm a reservation, Booking.com states “all rooms on Booking.com are instantly confirmable at the moment of booking.”

      Booking.com wants to change the narrative: Its growth, and especially its girth, compare favorably with Airbnb’s on the apartment rental front. And Booking.com can show some digital one-up-manship too because all of its 21 million rooms are instantly confirmable.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 12.04.16 21:56:56
      Beitrag Nr. 8 ()
      Airbnb is forecast to have $12.3 billion in bookings in 2016
      Apr 11.2016

      https://www.tnooz.com/article/airbnb-is-forecast-to-have-12-…

      Hard data on the financials of private company Airbnb are notoriously difficult to nail down.

      But a new estimate by US investment bank Cowen & Company predicts that the bookings site will process $12.3 billion in reservations this year, up from an estimated $7.2 billion in 2015.

      The estimates are based on a prediction that Airbnb will service 129 million guests this year. A related assumption is that the company’s own revenue may top $1.6 billion this year.

      Analysts Kevin Kopelman and James Sullivan made the estimates in a research note released on Monday.

      They also surveyed 1,400 US travelers (balanced to reflect the general population) to get a sense of Airbnb’s popularity.

      About half of travelers who used Airbnb for business trips were more satisfied with Airbnb than with their average hotel stay (51% versus 10% preferring hotels and 39% being neutral). The numbers for leisure travelers were equally notable.

      These results echoed a survey Goldman Sachs did this winter that found that Airbnb had strong favorability ratings by travelers.

      Yet the Cowen & Company survey found that high satisfaction didn’t mean that guests stopped using hotels. Almost all of the surveyed Airbnb customers said they had also used hotels in the past year. When examining the share of all booked stays, hotels still took 69% of Airbnb customers’ total nights.

      In short, it’s not an either/or thing, and guests may prefer Airbnb-style lodging for some types of trips but not for others.

      Kopelman and Sullivan write that Priceline and Expedia have hedged against the possible cannibalization of their business by Airbnb by investing in vacation rentals and other self-catering, short-term properties.

      For example, the analysts estimate that 46% of the properties listed on Booking.com now are vacation rental properties (which are primarily in Europe and instantly bookable). For Priceline Group as a whole, the analysts estimate that vacation rentals today are responsible for about one in eight room nights reserved through its brands.

      Expedia’s investment in HomeAway was similarly seen as a hedge that could offer the online travel protection from customer erosion by Airbnb.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 29.06.16 15:12:13
      Beitrag Nr. 9 ()
      Airbnb Is Said to Be Seeking Funding Valuing It at $30 Billion
      By LESLIE PICKER and MIKE ISAACJUNE 28, 2016

      http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/business/dealbook/airbnb-i…

      Airbnb, which lets users list their homes and apartments for short-term rentals, is in talks for a new round of investment that would value the company at about $30 billion, according to people briefed on the matter.

      Under the terms of the new fund-raising, Airbnb will have tripled its valuation in two years.

      Airbnb plans to use the financing to further feed its growth plans and international expansion, said these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

      The company, based in San Francisco, has been expanding in new markets over the last two years, with a 700 percent increase in business from Chinese travelers, the company has said. Last year, Airbnb opened its operations in Cuba for the first time.

      Airbnb is also experimenting with alternative lines of revenue, for example, by letting tourists include add-on services in their trips like restaurant reservations and museum tours.

      The equity funding comes in addition to a $1 billion debt facility that Airbnb has secured, according to a Bloomberg report this month.

      Kim Rubey, a spokeswoman for Airbnb, declined to comment.

      Despite the recent volatility in the public markets, some private companies have still been able to attract funding. Start-ups like Airbnb and Uber have been garnering billions of dollars as they seek to expand globally.

      A $30 billion valuation would make Airbnb the second-highest-valued start-up in the United States behind Uber, which is now valued at $62.5 billion, according to a list compiled by CB Insights.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 15.07.16 10:28:03
      Beitrag Nr. 10 ()
      Airbnb Scores Another Win With Corporate Travel Management Integration

      Dan Peltier, Skift - Jul 12, 2016 7:00 am

      https://skift.com/2016/07/12/airbnb-scores-another-corporate…


      Airbnb’s advance into business travel gets stronger this week as American Express Global Business Travel, BCD Travel, and Carlson Wagonlit Travel will integrate Airbnb for Business into their platforms and allow employees and travel managers to book stays with Airbnb.

      Business travelers or travel managers will be able to book stays directly through Airbnb and travel managers will also be able to track and expense their employees’ bookings, similar to how they already track hotel bookings.

      That integration lets reservation details for each business trip be automatically shared with travel management companies, allowing travel managers to access that data in real-time through expense reporting platforms and travelers to view their booking details in their corporate itineraries and on their mobile devices, which wasn’t possible before if they booked through Airbnb. This integration will go live in the U.S. this summer and expand to other countries later this year.

      American Express Global Business Travel isn’t the first travel management company to partner with Airbnb as Concur, for example, began letting business travelers book Airbnb rentals through its TripLink service in July 2014, pre Airbnb for Business. But Global Business Travel’s size certainly points to more companies becoming comfortable with bringing Airbnb into their managed travel programs and also Airbnb’s business travel ambitions.


      Airbnb Vs. Hotel

      The average business trip booked on Airbnb is six days, said Lex Bayer, Airbnb’s head of global payments and business travel.

      “It’s not a game about either choosing a hotel or Airbnb,” said Bayer. “It’s about finding the right accommodation for the right trip. Hotels are very well-suited for the one- to three-day trip. If you’re going to stay in a city for a consulting project for over a week Airbnb is perhaps a better option.”

      And while Bayer’s point has validity, Wes Bergstrom, vice president of American Express Global Business Travel’s global supplier relations, said “the jury is still out in terms of how this will impact companies’ travel programs” and whether more companies will opt-in.

      “We see this agreement as complimentary to other content we’re sourcing for our travelers today. We’ve seen many of our business travelers using Airbnb but there are many business travelers out there that are very loyal to hotels but for those who want other options that is what this agreement is about.”

      Last month Airbnb began letting business travelers book on behalf of fellow employees for employees going on the same trip, for example, “this helps integrate Airbnb into traditional travel programs and make it easier for Airbnb to fit into regular processes,” said Bayer.

      Airbnb rolled out Business Travel Ready for hosts late last year that’s aimed at educating hosts about business travelers’ needs and ensuring their listings have essential business travel amenities such as Wi-Fi, 24-hour check-in and smoke and Carbon monoxide detectors. That program now has “tens of thousands of listings,” according to Bayer. “This is still very strong with the millennial demographic but we’ve seen business travelers of all ages staying with us.”

      Business travelers using Airbnb have booked stays in 172 countries and companies using Airbnb for Business represent 150 countries. To date, about 50,000 companies have used Airbnb for Business and 10 percent of all travel booked through Airbnb is business travel.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 02.10.16 22:24:59
      Beitrag Nr. 11 ()
      That noise you can hear is self-management dying on Airbnb and vacation rentals
      Sep 26.2016

      https://www.tnooz.com/article/self-management-dying-on-airbn…

      No matter how you cut it, this was a rough week for those who believe owner-managed vacation rentals are the future of the short-term accommodation space.

      “How can I say that”, you ask? Let’s read the tea leaves together.

      NB: This is an analysis by Andrew McConnell, co-founder and CEO at Rented.com.


      To begin, Airbnb quietly rolled out its “Find a Superhost” page. This may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but think about what it implies for a second.

      First of all, Airbnb – the same company that built its brand as one that helps retirees rent out their spare room in order to keep the house they could no longer afford – is finally admitting that a good number of people actually don’t want to do all of the work it takes to manage an Airbnb.

      No matter how slick the site, the time consuming and often dirty work of managing an Airbnb is simply too much for the vast majority of people.

      No harm there, you might think. But that is just the start. Airbnb is also not-so-subtly acknowledging that guests actually prefer a more professional and businesslike service.

      Why have the Superhost badge otherwise?

      If people didn’t actually prefer this more professional service, why go out of your way to highlight it and encourage the less professional, self-managing Airbnb hosts on your site to work with them instead?

      Sure, they use the euphemism “experienced”, but we all know what that really means. A Superhost is a small business.

      But an experienced Superhost looking to add properties? That is an aspiring mini-hotelier, and in the vacation rental world, we call them vacation rental managers. They are businesses, they do this for a living, and they do it well.

      Welcome to the fold, Airbnb.

      But surely if I am one of the few that prefer to host/self-manage on Airbnb, there is still a place for me, right? Not necessarily.


      Reality

      Airbnb does not make its money from the number of listings it has. Instead, it takes a cut of the bookings.

      The higher the price and the more nights booked, the more money Airbnb makes.

      Will Airbnb make more from an amateurish listing, when the owner is working a full-time job, cannot be as responsive, and only rents about half the time that is available?

      Or will Airbnb make more from the professional manager, I’m sorry, Superhost, who is now doing this full time and can rate optimize and max out the calendar?

      And if Airbnb makes more from one of those types of “hosts” than the other, might they be tempted to provide preferred placement to listings managed by one type of host versus the other

      Maybe even going so far as to create a new category, badge icon, and filtering feature to highlight and select just such people, and maybe even encourage the lower performing people to instead just work with their top performing ones? Exactly.

      Exactly.

      At this point, the other main option for the amateur vacation host is to go to VRBO. After all, “rent by owner” is in the name. That, however, is where things get REALLY bad.

      This week happens to be when HomeAway, owner of VRBO and itself owned by Expedia Inc, hosts RezFest for the professional managers who use its software.

      It is a great gathering where the industry gets together to hear what the company has planned for the future.


      Post-acquisition situation

      Now, before I say what happened, it is probably worth noting that since its $3.9 billion acquisition by Expedia, HomeAway has not been shy in saying it is moving to having all of its listings online bookable in the near future, and very deliberately shifting to a revenue model that is no longer based on listing fees, but rather on booking fees taken as a percentage of the entire booking.

      Sound familiar?

      And, like with Airbnb, which listings do you think will make HomeAway (Expedia) more money?
      The one from the amateur renting a few weeks a year, or the Conrad Hilton to be who is looking to build a rental empire?

      Fortunately you don’t have to guess. As Brian Sharples, co-founder and CEO of HomeAway, said while on stage this week in Orlando:

      “You have a huge advantage as a PM [professional manager] against your competitors [self managers] with the new best match algorithm.”

      So go ahead, switch from Airbnb to VRBO. You are just as likely, or rather as unlikely, to show at the top of search results and get bookings.

      Okay, so the two big dogs are not on the homeowners’ side anymore. Time to find a new listing site. This, however, is where it gets even worse.

      You see, the same day Sharples let it be known that managers would get preferred placement, Airbnb raised another round of financing – $555 million at an estimated $30 billion valuation.


      The OTHER brand

      So what? Sure Airbnb and Expedia have deep pockets, but a competitor serving hosts still has a chance, right? Maybe. But it’s probably worth checking where that round of financing came from... Google.

      Yes, Google. The same Google that launched a new app on Monday that aims to “revolutionize” how you vacation.

      Who will Google make sure shows up at the top of search results when people are looking to book a place to stay?

      And once you visit the site they place up top, who do you think is going to show up at the top of the search results on that site?

      So yes, with new features and product launches, and with hundreds of millions of dollars of investment pouring into the space, it may have been a monster week for the short-term rental space as an industry.

      But, please, spare a thought for those self-managing hosts who no longer stand a chance.

      They are the ones that helped get us here in the first place.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 07.12.16 15:43:51
      Beitrag Nr. 12 ()
      Avatar
      schrieb am 07.12.16 15:49:29
      Beitrag Nr. 13 ()
      auch interessant,
      wie sie mit Resort-Märkten umgehen: https://www.tnooz.com/article/airbnb-vacation-rentals-resort…
      Avatar
      schrieb am 14.12.16 08:26:28
      Beitrag Nr. 14 ()
      Airbnb demand increasingly hitting hotels, not online travel agencies
      Dec 12.2016


      Use of Airbnb is growing faster than industry commentators predicted, with hotels the main losers in the new accommodation war.

      A large survey and follow-up analysis by global financial services giant Morgan Stanley says that Airbnb penetration of the accommodation sector is hitting somewhere in the region of 18-19%, up from 12% last year.

      This marked increase in the space of just 12 months is being felt in both leisure and corporate travel, with nearly a fifth of both types having being hosted by an Airbnb member.

      Although growth is forecast to slow slightly over the course of the next year, penetration is likely to be at around 23-25%.

      Driving this still-rapid increase in usage is a combination of high traveller awareness (75% of consumers) and even higher user satisfaction rates (93%), Morgan Stanley says.


      So where is shift to Airbnb coming from?

      According to the report, almost half of respondents (49%) shifted stays away from so-called “traditional hotels” over the course of the last year, with the same figure expected for 2017.

      With hotel bookings such an important mainstay of the online travel agency model, some could be forgiven for expecting the likes of Expedia, Booking.com et al to experience some kind of donwside contagion as a result.

      Not according to Morgan Stanley, which says OTAs are building out their own capability to handle alternative accommodation (rentals, homestays, etc) and, interestingly, could make them stronger competitors to Airbnb in the immediate future.

      Furthermore, OTAs (the Big Two, at least) have eye-wateringly large warchests when it comes to marketing spend (again, difficult for Airbnb to counter) and their own online penetration still has plenty on runway ahead.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 21.12.16 10:47:37
      Beitrag Nr. 15 ()
      SKIFT TAKE
      As a private company Airbnb isn’t required to publicly disclose much when it comes to its finances. What is clear from analysing the accounts of Airbnb Payments UK Ltd., however, is just how much money is swilling about the company.
      — Patrick Whyte

      https://skift.com/2016/12/19/airbnb-is-flush-with-the-money-…

      Like so many of the other fast-growing tech businesses, Airbnb does its best to hide its performance from the public and competitors.

      Of course as a private company it has every right to so, but that makes judging its financial performance very difficult.

      Airbnb Inc. is based in Delaware, the U.S. state. While Airbnb’s claims of $900 million revenue are impossible to verify, the potential is strong enough to attract investors, who continue to hand over cash.

      The company’s rapid growth has generated massive hype. In the most recent round of funding Airbnb allegedly secured a further $850 million, valuing the company at $30 billion.

      This veil of secrecy has been lifted, albeit ever so slightly, through the publication of a set of accounts at Companies House in the UK for a company called Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. These disclosures are required for UK businesses.


      A CASH COLLECTING MACHINE

      Airbnb Payments UK Ltd is responsible for collecting all guest fees in every single territory where Airbnb is active except for the U.S., China and India. These three countries have their own corporate entities processing payments.

      Looking at the terms and conditions on the Airbnb website, it is easy to see just how important Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. is to its whole operation.

      The accounts in question cover a period of just less than a year from January 16, 2015 until December 31 of that same year.

      Airbnb’s global business model is pretty simple: it charges guests between 6 and 12 percent of the total booking cost before returning 97 percent of the reservation subtotal back to the hosts. In other words, it charges the hosts 3 percent of the rental.

      Given, that Airbnb Payments UK Ltd is responsible for collecting all this cash you would expect it to show up as revenue in the accounts. Well, it doesn’t.

      Instead, the company has made it very clear that it is doing the cash collecting on behalf of another part of the Airbnb empire.


      THE IRISH CONNECTION

      While the principal activity of Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. is described as “cash collection,” the activity was conducted on behalf of Airbnb Ireland.

      Airbnb’s Irish operation is arguably its most import outside of its base in San Francisco. Earlier this year the company opened a new 40,000-square-foot international headquarters in what has become known as the Silicon Docks area of Dublin.

      There are plenty of reasons to choose Ireland as a business base but one of the main reasons companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft put some of their operations there is because of the business-friendly tax regime, which includes the corporate tax rate of just 12.5 percent. Apple is currently appealing an EU ruling that it owes Ireland $14.5 billion in back taxes.

      In a submission to the Irish finance minister last year, Airbnb Ireland said: “Ireland is the primary base for our business outside the United States. All transactions relating to non-U.S. users are handled by Airbnb Ireland, pursuant to applicable Irish laws and regulations.”

      Instead of earning money from guests and hosts using the Airbnb system, Airbnb Payments UK Ltd gets its money from the “recharge of certain costs and an annual fee paid to the company by Airbnb Ireland,” the filing states.

      According to the accounts this resulted in turnover of $53.6 million. After deducting costs and adding back certain administrative expenses and interest, Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. was left with a pre-tax profit of $1.3 million. UK corporation tax amounted to $255,464. As this is the first time the company has filed accounts there is no way to compare it to the previous year.

      Assessing Airbnb’s “rest of the world” business using the profit and loss account is pretty much impossible because of the way the company is set up.

      The revenue booked doesn’t come from the global accommodation marketplace but rather from a related company. Instead it is more instructive to look at two other components of company accounts: the balance sheet and cash flow statement.


      WHAT CAN WE LEARN?

      While we can’t find out how much money Airbnb makes from its “rest of the world” operation, the accounts for Airbnb Payments UK Ltd offer some clues as to the scale of the business.

      Both the balance sheet and cash flow statement give some strong indications about how much money is involved.

      Unlike a profit and loss account, the balance sheet and cash flow statement only offer a snapshot of a company’s finances on the last day of its financial period (in the case of Airbnb Payments UK Ltd, December 31, 2015). Nevertheless, they are still useful.

      Airbnb Payments UK Ltd had plenty of cash in the bank at the end of last year: $546,655,809, to be precise. Together with $297 million owed to it by debtors, its assets amounted to $843 million.

      Coincidentally it owed almost exactly the same amount ($842 million) to its creditors, giving it total assets of $1 million.

      The cash flow statement is even more remarkable.

      The term “cash flows from operating activities” means the amount of money brought in through the regular business activities of the company, which in this case we know to be “cash collection.” In just under a year the figure for Airbnb Payments UK Ltd was $547 million.


      SO HOW MUCH MONEY DID AIRBNB MAKE?

      Although the figures give an idea of the amount of cash flowing through Airbnb’s non-U.S. business it is impossible to tell exactly how much it makes because of Irish company law.

      Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. carries out its cash collection on behalf of Airbnb Ireland and it turns out that Airbnb Ireland is what is known as an “unlimited company.”

      An unlimited company carries a number of risks for shareholders. In the event of it being wound up, those involved have an unlimited liability to the company’s debts on insolvency.
      However, for those that are happy to take on the risk, there are a number of advantages. One of the key ones is that in many cases they are not required to file accounts.

      Since it was registered in April 2012, Airbnb Ireland Unlimited Company has only filed its accounts once: an abbreviated set published in 2013. A spokesperson for Airbnb confirmed that Airbnb Ireland was not required to submit financial statements.

      According to its annual return, Airbnb Ireland Unlimited Company is majority-owned by another Irish company, Airbnb International Unlimited Company, which in turn is owned by a company based in the offshore tax haven of Jersey.

      A spokesperson for Airbnb said: “We follow the rules and pay all the tax we owe in the places we do businesses. Corporation tax is a tax on profit, and Airbnb is a young company investing heavily in our future. Airbnb hosts keep 97 percent of the price they charge to rent their space and the overwhelming amount of money generated by the Airbnb platform stays with hosts and their communities. The Airbnb model is unique and empowers regular people, boosts local communities and is subject to local tax. It also makes Airbnb fundamentally different to companies that take large sums of money out of the places they do business.”


      ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

      Airbnb Payments UK Ltd. has three directors. Lex Bayer, the San Francisco-based Group Head of Business Development, Payments, and Airbnb for Business; Sharda Mehta, the company’s Deputy General Counsel; and Hadi Moussa, Head of EMEA Partnerships.

      The company has no employees other than the directors and their remuneration is taken care of by an “associated company” Airbnb UK Ltd.

      Airbnb UK Ltd is essentially the face of Airbnb in the UK and is responsible for promoting it in the country.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 18.01.17 16:30:25
      Beitrag Nr. 16 ()
      Winners and losers in the US travel website marketplace

      Jan 18.2017

      https://www.tnooz.com/article/winners-and-losers-us-travel-w…

      Airbnb ended 2016 ahead of Booking.com for the first time in visitor numbers on US travel websites, although Expedia remains ahead of both.

      Data released by audience tracking service SimilarWeb saw the home sharing service reach 87.8 million visits in the last quarter of the year.

      This was 5.5 million ahead of Booking.com and reversed their respective positions in the same period the previous year (Booking.com had 66.5 million; Airbnb had 61.7 million).

      Expedia secured 136.4 million in Q4 2016, up from 120.4 million in Q4 2015, according to SimilarWeb.

      Booking.com sister sites Priceline achieved 80.8 million and Kayak got 77.4 million.

      TripAdvisor remains the most popular travel site in the US, with 226.5 million visitors in Q4 2016, although this was apparently down by 0.6 million visits from the same three months in 2015.

      Other brands recorded to be losing traffic included Orbitz (down 17% year-on-year in the last quarter to 30.4 million), Hotwire (down 18% to 24.1 million) and Cheaptickets (down 20% to 10.7 million).

      ...
      Avatar
      schrieb am 16.02.17 12:18:19
      Beitrag Nr. 17 ()
      Angeblich in H2-2017 in die schwarzen Zahlen gekommen:
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/airbnb-en…
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.02.17 13:46:42
      Beitrag Nr. 18 ()
      nächste Akquisition:
      SKIFT TAKE
      Travelers have long asked Airbnb to make it easier to share the cost of a rental, including when they are using different currencies from a lodging host. By acquiring Tilt, the startup will likely add that service to its app.
      — Sean O'Neill


      Late yesterday Airbnb closed on its acquisition of Tilt, a startup whose mobile app enables peer-to-peer payments like rival Venmo.

      Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky has said he wants to make it easier for groups of people to split the costs of Airbnb-assisted rentals.

      A source says that Jeff Jordan, the Andreessen Horowitz partner on the board of the online home-booking company and the payments startup, helped to engineer the deal.

      The terms of the deal were not disclosed, and TechCrunch broke the story. But Fast Company reports that sources say the value was “closer” to the $62.1 million that payments startup had raised from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Felicis Ventures. That would be a much lower level than the $500 million valuation Tilt was hoping for as recently as summer 2015.

      In the absence of a formal statement, Airbnb is believed to be buying Tilt, founded in 2012, for its skill at payments technology rather than to keep the brand operating independently over the long-term. However, there was no immediate shutdown announced.

      Tilt says more than 500,000 groups completed trips and split bills via its system. The company stands out for being able to handle cross-currency payments, something that’s important to a company like Airbnb that is matching hosts and travelers internationally.

      Airbnb became profitable for the first time during the second half of 2016. That means more acquisitions may be in the works, such as a rumored one for Beijing-based home-sharing startup Xiaozhu, prior to the company’s expected initial public offering. It purchased Luxury Retreats last week.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.02.17 14:47:46
      Beitrag Nr. 19 ()
      Lustig:
      http://www.gruenderszene.de/galerie/pitch-deck-airbnb?pid=13…


      hinterher ist man meistens schlauer...
      Avatar
      schrieb am 24.07.17 18:45:10
      Beitrag Nr. 20 ()
      ...freue mich auf den IPO:

      Airbnb signs partnership with Flight Centre’s corporate travel brands
      Jun 29.2017

      Airbnb continues to become part of the business travel establishment, signing a partnership with Flight Centre Travel Group‘s (FCTG) corporate travel brands in Australia and New Zealand.

      Campus Travel and Stage and Screen will be the first brands to go live with Airbnb, with the FCM Travel Solutions and Corporate Traveller next in line.

      FCTG said that it has been trialling Airbnb properties with one client, and seeing satisfaction ratings of 4.76 out of 5 from travellers at an average daily rate of A$80 ($77).

      Andrew Flannery, FCTG’s executive general manager of corporate travel, said Airbnb properties “will appeal to sections of our customer base…looking to experience something a little different to a traditional hotel stay” but also noted Airbnb might fill the gap in destinations where there is an under-supply of suitable hotel rooms.

      And David Holyoke, global director of business travel at Airbnb, talked the talk in terms of “giving business travellers the ability to explore a city like a local.”

      Airbnb launched a dedicated business travel unit in 2015 and says that 10% of bookings are from people travelling on business. It has partnerships in place with a number of TMCs including American Express Global Business Travel, CWT and BCD.

      It recently introduced the “Business Travel Ready” program where properties which meet certain criteria are highlighted on the search results.

      Airbnb – and let’s face it, every other booking site out there – has always taken a lot of business from SMEs and the unmanaged and maverick business travellers. There’s a good reason why Priceline launched Booking.com for Business.

      But with Flight Centre now also selling Airbnb (albeit only in Australia and New Zealand), the alternative accommodation provider is becoming increasingly mainstream.
      Avatar
      schrieb am 03.08.17 13:56:05
      Beitrag Nr. 21 ()
      Avatar
      schrieb am 18.07.18 16:35:28
      Beitrag Nr. 22 ()
      widen the gap


      Beitrag zu dieser Diskussion schreiben


      Zu dieser Diskussion können keine Beiträge mehr verfasst werden, da der letzte Beitrag vor mehr als zwei Jahren verfasst wurde und die Diskussion daraufhin archiviert wurde.
      Bitte wenden Sie sich an feedback@wallstreet-online.de und erfragen Sie die Reaktivierung der Diskussion oder starten Sie
      hier
      eine neue Diskussion.
      Air Bnb - kommt der Börsengang?