Airbnb Goes After Business Travelers

Whether you revile or revere Airbnb, you cannot dispute the role the company has had in expanding and legitimizing the sharing economy. Sure there have been a few trashed homes here and there and the company is in an ongoing tussle with stubborn New York City business interests—the latest salvo is a coalition of “concerned citizens” who launched a site allowing Airbnb users to locate sex offenders and building code violations. The fact that NYC’s hotel occupancy rate hovers around 88 percent shows that Airbnb is hardly a threat, but in fact is really a complement, to hotels. And that is why more business travelers are using Airbnb when attending those conferences or sales meetings.

And why wouldn’t they? Take New York, where average hotel rates are approaching $300. In San Francisco,  they are over $200 a night. (In fact, the city of San Francisco has finally realized that Airbnb is here to stay and voted to legalize and regulate short-term rentals.) And those rates are before a major conference hits town, which sends hotel prices up even further—if you can score one during one of those massive tech conferences at Moscone Center. So if you don’t want to walk from the Tenderloin to the SOMA in San Francisco, or get stuck in L.A. traffic because those hotels in Santa Monica or downtown were beyond budget, Airbnb could offer a more comfortable stay, with more workspace and room to chill, than an overpriced hotel room.

I personally have used Airbnb when I have attended conferences in Amsterdam and San Francisco when the host hotels were way too ridiculously priced. Every place I have stayed using Airbnb has had wi-fi, and no, I didn’t need to pay for it and it was fast. If a washer and dryer were not available, a laundry service was a short walk away; and many of these places are in urban neighborhoods with plenty of restaurants that are not only cheaper than what are in hotels, but better. And that is the reality of more business travelers today as companies shrink travel budgets: a rule limiting maximum spend on meals to $50 or $60 is not unheard of, which can disappear in a hotel by lunch time.

A quick search I did on Airbnb for a spot in San Francisco during the first week of November scored a three-bedroom apartment for $410 a night; plenty of “flats” (what’s up with San Franciscans using UK terminology?) for well under $200 a night, including the more convenient SOMA and Financial District areas; and an entire mid-century or Victorian house for about $1,000 a night—not bad if multiple employees are staying in the same property. Of course, that is the big “if” . . . whether you want to share a place among the people with whom you flew into town. Then again, as isolating as hotel rooms can be, such an experience can add, not distract from the trip. Property owners can benefit too—would you rather have a few focused business types stay over for a few nights, or risk irritating the neighbors by hosting some rowdy holiday revelers?

The growing trend of business travelers using Airbnb is why the company and Concur, one of the largest business travel booking sights in the U.S., are now working together. Airbnb has allowed more of Concur’s clients to let employees to use the service to book on Airbnb—allowing businesses to track expenses easily while employees can finish those annoying expense reports quickly. For many in corporate America, staying in some stranger’s house comes across as creepy; but in an age where more people are accustomed to the sharing economy and seek new experiences, the chance to stay in a unique home, work on the balcony, and avoid those pallid hotel rooms make Airbnb a natural choice for more business travelers.

Image credit: Airbnb

After a year in the Middle East and Latin America, Leon Kaye is based in California again. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter. Other thoughts of his are on his site, greengopost.com.