It's Official: Airbnb is Taking Over the Planet

The Union Hotel and Bed & Breakfast celebrates Brooklyn. Built with 19th century brick and mortar, The Union pays tribute to the factories and warehouses that built New York into the greatest city in the world. (Photo: Airbnb)

Is there anything you can’t rent on Airbnb? In my time looking for vacation rentals on the site I have been able to procure a teepee, an Airstream trailer, the fairytale princess castle of my dreams and even a yurt.

And now you can even book an adorable boutique hotel. Smaller hotels are now using the home sharing site to try to fill their empty rooms which has Airbnb competing with long time bookers like Expedia and Priceline.

According to a recent report in Fast Company, boutique hotels are finding Airbnb with their 3% fee, a much cheaper alternative to Expedia and Priceline, which can charge a fee up to 25% for per reservation.

“Any hotel that needs to fill rooms, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t need to use it as one of their marketing arms,” Stephan Westman, a hotel industry consultant who has listed hotel rooms on Airbnb, told Fast Company.

Wrede Petersmeyer, Airbnb’s New York City manager, told the magazine that the company allows hotels to list, as long as they are very transparent in their offerings.

The properties have to be clear about being a hotel and disclose any hotel related fees etc.

Hotels that are using the service include The Box House Hotel and The Union Hotel in Brooklyn, the Guesthouse Hotel in Chicago, The Sea Rock Inn, in Los Angeles and The Lumber Baron Inn, in Denver.

This is a relatively new development that Expedia and Priceline are taking incredibly seriously. Expedia has even purchased the Airbnb competitor Homeaway for $3.9 billion.

"I think it’s a threat that we look at,” Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom said at a conference, when asked about whether Airbnb is an actual competitor to the platform. "We should take it seriously, and I think at the same time, we look at what Airbnb is doing, and we look at that as a potentially attractive opportunity for us.“

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