Airbnb debuts Plus, a high-end option competing with hotels, in 13 cities globally; lodgings include amenities and are inspected and professionally photographed
Airbnb's Plus launch caps a year of premium positioning: Bloomberg reported in mid-2017 that the company was preparing a luxury vacation-rental service for mansions and penthouses, and Plus delivers the broader version of that idea — inspected, professionally photographed homes in 13 cities, aimed squarely at travelers who would otherwise book hotels.
Plus also turns out to be the opening move in a longer tiering arc: by 2023 Airbnb stretched downmarket with Rooms averaging $67 a night alongside price-transparency upgrades, added a top-rated badge in its Winter Release, and by 2026 was running a boutique-hotel pilot in NYC and LA — making the 2018 inspection-and-photography standard the template for how the platform segments supply.
First-order effects
Hosts in the 13 launch cities can now qualify for a premium tier only by passing an inspection and professional photography shoot, raising the bar for listing quality on the platform.
Hotels face a direct competitor offering vetted, amenity-rich lodgings under the Airbnb brand rather than peer-to-peer listings of uneven quality.
Second-order effects
Quality verification becomes Airbnb's competitive weapon against both hotels and rival home-sharing platforms, shifting differentiation from price to trust and consistency.
Once Plus proves demand for curated tiers, the same segmentation logic pulls Airbnb toward adjacent segments — budget single rooms and, eventually, hotel inventory itself.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, Airbnb stops being a single peer-to-peer marketplace and becomes a segmented lodging platform spanning budget rooms to boutique hotels, blurring the line between the home-sharing disruptor and the hotel industry it set out against.
The trend: Airbnb is progressively stratifying its marketplace into verified quality and price tiers, converging structurally with the hotel industry it originally disrupted.
Some news from Airbnb today: — Adding option to book four new property types: Vacation Home, Unique Space, B&B and Boutique. — Adding label for homes that qualify as Airbnb Plus, or ones that have been verified as high-quality. — Adding “Beyond,” a luxury line of stays/trips.
Custom-designed trips of a lifetime are now a reality win Beyond by Airbnb - swish homes in luxury locations, coming in the spring pic.twitter.com/DFrTydxpB9
Airbnb Plus is a new tier of fancy homes for under $250 per night which reach more than 100 points of quality standards - e.g targeting the kind of people who usually stay in swanky hotels pic.twitter.com/LR4hVpcKkR
Airbnb categories now include: - vacation home - unique space - B&B - Boutique on top of the existing shared space, private room and entire home listings
JUST IN via @dee_bosa @paayalzaveri: @Airbnb is expanding the number of hotels on its platform, and announcing a loyalty program in a bid to deepen its presence in the hotel and travel agency business — company already has at least 15,000 hotel listings http://cnb.cx/2FpCtmA