Marriott will take over the rental of apartments, and Airbnb will take over the hotel business.
Marriott International, a well-known hotel chain operator, has announced its intention to become a competitor to the Airbnb platform by creating its own private accommodation rental service. At the same time, Airbnb is actively working in the direction of the hotel business.
Marriott, which owns popular hotel brands such as Sheraton, W Hotels and The Ritz-Carlton, is reportedly ready to help rent more than 2,000 luxury apartments across the United States. And we can expect that the new service will be launched in the very near future. Previously, he has already been tested in some countries of Western Europe.
Thus, Marriott enters the territory of Airbnb, which today controls 51% of the short-term rental market in the United States, according to analysis conducted by Host Compliance. The second and third places in the market belong to the VRBO and HomeAway services, which control 17% and 11%, respectively. Booking.com, which also owns Priceline and Kayak, claims to have more than 5 million short-term rentals and is often cited as a rival to Airbnb. But in reality, he controls only 5% of the market.
Recently, Airbnb has often faced aggressive opposition from local government officials, who claim that the service is in fact a version of the hotel business, but without complying with relevant laws and restrictions. This struggle is especially acute in New York. The city boasts some of the strictest restrictions on short-term rentals in the country, and local officials have been battling Airbnb for five years.
Perhaps for these reasons, Airbnb is increasingly looking towards the hotel business. For example, last month the company announced its intention to acquire last-minute hotel booking app HotelTonight, paying over $400 million for it. Airbnb also announced a partnership with RXR Realty, the owner of a high-rise office building in New York's Rockefeller Center, to transform 10 floors into luxurious apartment hotel-style rooms. Well, since the building is a commercial premises, local laws regarding short-term rental of residential real estate do not apply to it.
Well, we live in a time of business diversification and the complexity of business processes. It is becoming increasingly difficult to delineate the boundaries between the areas of activity of companies.
