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Airbnb Is Thinking Bigger, Says Chesky

Appearing at the Skift Global Forum this week in New York City, CEO and Cofounder Brian Chesky said Airbnb is far from slowing down. Rather, he sees the company evolving to new heights. Note: the company now has a market cap of $82 billion.

In conversation with Skift Founder Rafat Ali, Chesky said,“We're not an OTA. We do not do alternative accommodations. Alternative accommodations is what Booking.com does. We do Airbnb. It's a distinct, standalone category. Take the Airbnb model and we're going to bring it to a lot of different categories.”

He referred to the Apple and Amazon product journeys — imagine if Apple never launched the iPod or that Amazon never sold more than books?

“Why would Airbnb just offer homes? Why couldn't we offer significantly more things? And that's the future of this company,” Chesky said. The evolution of Airbnb into something beyond homes isn’t only hypothetical, it’s likely. “If we start with travel, that’s our nearest adjacency,” Chesky said. “That makes the most sense. But if we start with travel, that means everything we sell will be a subset of our core business. And, eventually, we do think there’s a path to be doing more than just travel, but we’re going to start with the way that consumers think about us now, which is travel.”


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