Airbnb may be scrambling over some legal potholes with its traditional business of letting individuals rent out their rooms, but the company’s B2B ventures appear to be taking off without a hitch. The company released a statement Friday (Aug. 21) that offered an update to its recent enterprise initiatives, and according to Airbnb, it’s looking pretty good. The company launched its corporate travel services last month in an effort to get more business travelers using its services. Airbnb says that within 24 hours of launching that program, it saw more than 500 companies signing on to use the platform. Today, the company says more than 1,000 companies are now using the corporate travel services. “The corporate community’s response to our Business Travel program has been staggering and confirms our findings that business travelers increasingly want to redefine the business trip,” said Airbnb Business Travel Lead Marc McCabe in the statement. He added that, on average, corporate travelers stay 6.8 days at an Airbnb-rented unit, a figure that suggests these travelers are using Airbnb for both corporate and leisure, using the booking service to extend a business trip for personal vacation. Airbnb added that corporate users from more than 35 nations have showed up on the Business Travel stats. While the platform only recently launched its corporate travel program, business travelers have been using the service for some time. According to reports last year, corporate travelers unable to find a last-minute hotel room or those traveling in large groups often find Airbnb beneficial for its convenience and affordability. In addition to front-facing services for corporate travelers, Airbnb is also reportedly working on back-end enterprise software for property managers, a service to help them automate some aspects of their pricing strategies and streamline their ability to link their properties to the Airbnb platform.
Airbnb said in a statement on July 20 that more than 1,000 companies have joined its new programme allowing business travellers to use the peer-to-peer-lodging service. Apparently Airbnb signed up 500 companies to its "Airbnb for Business" programme within 24 hours of launching the service on Friday, and now more than 1,000 firms from at least 35 countries have integrated the programme into their corporate travel plans. "The corporate community's response to our Business Travel programme has been staggering and confirms our findings that business travellers increasingly want to redefine the business trip," said Marc McCabe, who heads the programme.