Airbnb’s opportunity

Here’s the real travel challenge Mr Chesky

So the big global travel news this week appears to be Airbnb actually getting into the travel business. Apparently, according to the PR, it was always Brian Chesky’s dream. Great.

Here’s the rub. Airbnb, Tripadvisor plus presumably Google and Booking.com are all trying to create and sell whole packages – fulfilling their clients complete trips and not, of course, losing them to anyone else in the process. So, according to the blurb – more choice, more opportunity, more everything for everybody – and lots and lots of new visitors.

Obviously to add to the billion plus international travellers in just the first 9 months of this year.

Where will these visitors be enjoying their great new vibrant experiences?  Somewhere new, maybe?

According to Airbnb’s new app, their new friends will be enjoying fabulous new, exciting experiences in: San Francisco, Cape Town, Nairobi, Florence, Havana, Los Angeles, Detroit, London, Paris and other high-density tourism destinations.

So nothing new, then? Filling up the same old overfilled destinations. Right?

Because, actually, that’s all they can do. All these OTAs can make megabucks out of is to magnify demand for essentially the same old same old established destination brands and use existing infrastructure.

Since the 1960s the real travel industry was driven by real entrepreneurs – tour operators, hoteliers and other businesspeople who actually created and marketed destinations.

They put their money and their energy right on the line, building hotels and airports, buying airplanes,  expanding the capacity and the frontiers of tourism – and bringing benefits to new holidaymakers and new destination communities all over the world.

Airbnb and their algorythms, their hip designers and their rich tech shareholders wouldn’t take any such risk or make any real tangible committment. Their idea is to leech on already popular destinations and their groaning infrastructures, and give travel arrangements a flimsy makeover in the process delivering more low value tourist hordes.

Isn’t that good? Not when everyone’s experience of a fragile destination is contaminated by gross crowds demeaning the destination brand in the process. Not when short-let properties reduce the market, increase prices, put accommodation out of the reach of local people and create homelessness. Not when the only people who really benefit from this activity are Airbnb’s shareholders and Google adwords.

But why should they worry if destinations collapse – they, unlike the real travel industry, have no skin in the game anyway. They can just move on to the next opportunity without loss.

So here is a challenge to Airbnb’s new billionaire Brian Chesky and their like. Why not use your massive PR organisations, your $billion valuations, your relationships with Google and your algorythms to create something really new.

Why not choose a really sustainable, community-oriented destination and help them to get tourists that really benefit their local communities – economically, culturally, socially and environmentally?

That, Mr Chesky, is real dream that could change the real world and help those that need it, not those that don’t.

Valere Tjolle

@ValereTjolle