Airbnb has growing competitors
Airbnb is a vacation rental site, which serves as an online market place for property owners. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Started in the year 2008, the company has managed to establish its presence in 191 countries and 34,000 cities across the globe. The company has 2 million listing on its website.
The business model of Airbnb is popularly referred to as sharing economy or gig economy. The company model claims that it helps in mobilizing local economy and make money from unused property.
Though Airbnb’s model was completely new at the time of its launch there were certain services which bear minor resemblances to the former like couch surfing.
The success of the company stands
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The cost and other financial aspects of the deal were not disclosed.
Wimdu claims to have 300,000 listing and 9flats stated that it has 250,000 listing globally both of them merged together will have 500,000 listing however it does not match airbnb’s 2 million listings.
Wimdu is previously was in search of a buyer in the fire sale. The company burnt through the 90 million dollars it raised in the year 2011. Airbnb raised around 3.38 billion dollar during the same period.
9flats will be heading the merged companies under CEO Roman Bach. Bach was the head of business development and marketing before taking over as CEO from the founder of the company Stephan Uhrenbacher.
He stated that the merger will be beneficial to the company as it will help them build the largest force in online accommodation industry. It will provide the guests and hosts higher value propositions, long-term growth and acceleration.
While competitors have to battle against a strong force like Airbnb they also need to handle the ever changing regulatory issues. Countries and governments are still not in terms with the sharing economy and each city and state has been coming up with its set of rules making it really difficult for online accommodation
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3. Homeaway
The only online market place of vacation rentals that comes close to Airbnb in terms of size and business is Homeaway. It operates in similar fashion to Airbnb and has 1 million listing it does not charge guest for booking through their site and also has its own brand of insurance.
4.VRBO
This site is owned by the above mentioned Homeaway and is present in 100 countries and has 800,000 listings in it. It containes lot of full sized vacation homes thus giving space for your grandparents pets or grandkids.
5.Roomorama
This is another popular site operating in the same lines of Airbnb, it ensures safety of the guests by verifying proper ID and the company also has a unique payment system which will provide the guest with a six digit code while booking a room to ensure that the listing is by the house owner and also keeps scammers away.
6.Onefinestay
This site does its best to check whether the place you stay is comfortable enough to maintain the company staff personally asses the properties that are being listed on their site and them allow them on their site. This ensures good quality