Chip Conley wears two seemingly opposing travel industry hats: He is Airbnb's global head of hospitality and also the founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre, and still owns 15 hotels. On a panel last week in New York titled "Is Travel Broken?" Conley and the other panelists spoke to how the travel industry is changing, in part because of companies such as Airbnb. Afterward, he sat down with news editor Johanna Jainchill.
Q: As a hotel owner and former hotel executive, how do you think Airbnb can work with hotels to not be perceived as the enemy?
A: It's been interesting. The hotel industry's response has varied in extreme ways. In San Francisco the hotel industry has generally been neutral to positive. Partly because it's a city that had not had much hotel inventory added and they were in danger of losing some major conventions. So Airbnb provides a solution there. Similarly in Rio and Brazil, they couldn't have done the World Cup or the Olympics without alternative accommodations like Airbnb. But in New York the hotel associations and hotel unions have both been very rabidly anti-Airbnb.
We've done a variety of things to try and build relationships. We've had the global hotel companies come to our headquarters to do immersions so the Marriott and Hilton executives can learn about how we operate and how we understand millennial travel needs. In essence, instead of holding onto the knowledge we have we're sharing it, and we've looked at doing collaborative marketing in certain markets, collaborating with the local hotel community to market the city.
Q: What is your response to hotel representatives who say Airbnb doesn't play on a level playing field?
Chip Conley
A: Let me call them out in New York, for example, where they won't let us collect and remit hotel taxes. I say this as a hotelier. The hotel community has not allowed us to collect and remit taxes.
In order for us to collect taxes we have to have a licensing authority to give us that right. The hotel union and hotel associations have actually blocked that. So in the earlier days they said this is the lack of a level playing field. Recently, we're calling them out on it and saying we've been applying to try and pay taxes.
That's one part of the level playing field. If someone is [renting their home] when they're on vacation, in Europe and Israel and other places, that's what people do, for three to five weeks a year when they're traveling -- do you want that person to have to go through the process where they have to get the full license to do this? Probably not. But if someone is doing it more frequently, yes, there probably are some rules that need to be adhered to.
I'd say in New York our average host hosts 44 days per year. So that'd be less then four days per month.
Q: How is Airbnb handling the disruption to locals in certain locations, like Hawaii?
A: As a neighbor, people have access to a phone number if there's a problem going on.
We've seen some buildings where Airbnb hosts will host a happy hour so that someone from Croatia [for example] can come and talk about living in Croatia with someone in Seattle, for example. So I think the idea that there's something positive from it is significant.
The key is for us to help facilitate the positive.
We are pretty early on in this whole experiment. Home swapping has been going on since 1953 -- people have been using VRBO and Craigslist since 1995. Airbnb accelerated how much it was going on, that's perfectly clear.
So there are things we'll see in the next few years that are going to help create a more facilitative relationship with neighbors and neighborhoods.
And there are some places in the world that regulate it more aggressively, in Barcelona in the old city. And we have to live by the rules of the area of the city that has stronger regulations.
Q: Listening to this panel, it seems like Uber and Airbnb are winning out over taxis and hotels in the travel future.
A: I wouldn't compare Uber and car-sharing with Airbnb. The user case for Airbnb is that we know millions of people use Airbnb for certain purposes and hotels for other purposes. Whereas with car-sharing, they make the shift and tend to use the car-sharing service predominately.
The idea that home-sharing and hotels can coexist is pretty well documented based on how we're seeing that people use both. The shorter the stay, and the more someone has to have efficiency and services with the stay, the more likely they will stay in a hotel. The longer the stay, the more conscientiousness around price, the desire to be localized, the more leisure oriented, the more likely they are to use Airbnb.
I think that we'll continue to grow, but I think that the hotel industry's basic premise, why it exists, is not threatened.
I say that as a hotelier. I wouldn't be an executive at Airbnb if I thought Airbnb was going to wipe out the hotel industry.
Q: As a hotelier, what was it about Airbnb that enticed you to join their team?
A: I felt in my gut that Airbnb was the bigger and newer digital version of boutique hotels.