Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia hints at plans for travel world domination

Billionaire Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia has outlined plans to consolidate the international travel market during his first trip to Australia – a country where one in five people are signed-up members of his business.

The 10-year old Silicon Valley start-up operates as a way for hosts to rent a spare room, or their entire home, to a traveller, but the future of the platform is a more complete “end-to-end” trip experience.

“Our ambitions extend far beyond accommodations,” Mr Gebbia told journalists in Sydney on Monday.

“The average vacation takes upwards of 25 hours to plan and put together — from flights and rental cars, accommodations, split payments with friends — there are all these different components.

“I think people use about 10 different apps to coordinate an entire trip, so we ask the question: why? Couldn’t you have one place to go to put your whole trip together?”

The company that turned the global hotel industry on its head no longer wants to influence just where you stay, but also what you do while on holiday.

The launch of “experiences” in November last year — a new section of the platform that connects travellers with locals who offer activities such as walking tours — could put the company in competition with tour companies such as Contiki.

The idea of reducing the need for 10 travel apps to just one suggests the company may be looking at the lucrative booking sector of the industry, potentially pitting it against giants such as Expedia and Webjet.

But while the execs are excited for the future, the present still throws up pressures and problems.

Although a recent poll of 1853 Australians by Galaxy Research in August showed 65 per cent support the renting of private homes on Airbnb, including a “strongly support” result from 17 per cent, there remains a vocal segment of apartment owners concerned their buildings are transforming into hotels.

The backlash from some apartment residents has triggered debate in multiple states about how to regulate the usage of Airbnb.

“I think a lot of our original detractors are now on the other side of the fence. Out of every five people in Australia there’s a registered account – that certainly wasn’t true nine years ago,” Mr Gebbia said.

“From a regulatory standpoint, the more cities that come to understand us, the more they want to partner with us.

“There are more than 340 examples of cities we’ve sat down with and explained how our system works, how our reputation system works, how we can remove hosts from the site if we need to, and how we can facilitate the collection of tax income for tourist taxes to cities.”

Addressing tax concerns lobbed at tech almost all tech giants, including Google, the co-founder said “we love paying taxes, which is why we’ve worked with 340 cities to do that”.

But the major challenges to growth for Airbnb may not be entirely regulatory-based, according to research released earlier this month by Morgan Stanley, which outlines a “surprising slowdown in Airbnb adoption” in the US and Europe.

“Our AlphaWise survey data indicates Airbnb adoption has slowed, as the percent of travellers who used Airbnb over the last 12 months increased by only ~330 basis points to 25 per cent, a notable deceleration from the ~800 basis points increase in 2016,” a team of eight Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.

Two hurdles exist, the researchers say: First, the benefits of growing awareness are “topping out” in the US and Europe, sitting at an estimated 80 per cent, and second, Morgan Stanley sees “privacy/security are material and growing barriers to adoption”.

Those barriers may be less of an issue in Australia, with Airbnb reporting 122,500 active listings in the country — a 40 per cent year-on-year increase — and 4.8 million users.