Marriott International vs. Airbnb Although Marriott International has a competitive advantage of being the largest hotel company in the world, experiencing years of remarkable growth with the acquisition of Starwood Hotels, and ranking at number 163 on this year’s Fortune 500, it operates in a highly competitive market. The recent success of Airbnb, for example, has had major effects on the hotel industry as it has quickly become a threat. Airbnb, founded in 2008, is an online hospitality service that provides short-term lodging and unique travel accommodations around the world with more than 3,000,000 lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries. Having a value of over $10 billion, Airbnb “exceeds that of well-established global hotel chains like Hyatt” (Hospitality Net). This proves that this online service is significantly surpassing these stable hotel chains that have been competing in the industry for over 60 years. Along with this, a recent report by HVS Consulting & Valuation found that “hotels lose approximately $450 million in direct revenues per year to AirBnb” (Orourke). Although Marriott International has been performing with a 45% increase in revenues from 2012 to 2016, Airbnb has definitely had an impact on the consumer perspective of traditional hotel rooms. In addition to this, hotels also lose over $108 million of food and beverage revenues as a result of guests not spending their money at the hotel’s restaurant. The use of other services, like the