CRM
In 2008, two young entrepreneurs, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, founded Air Bed and Breakfast, a platform connecting homeowners and apartment owners with travelers seeking a place to stay. The initial offer was simple: a room, an air mattress, and a cereal breakfast — featuring Barack Obama’s face on the box. They raised $30,000, and that’s how the story of this marketplace began.
Less than ten years later, the startup had become Airbnb, boasting over 2 million beds in more than 190 countries.
For comparison, the world’s largest hotel group, born from the 2016 merger of Starwood and Marriott, counts 1.1 million beds. In a city like Paris, Airbnb now offers as many rooms as there are hotel rooms — between 70,000 and 80,000 — meaning one home out of nineteen (1.4 million homes) is listed on the platform.
By nurturing customer relationships, a company that owns no beds, employs no housekeepers or chefs, and started with minimal capital, has become the number one rival of the world’s largest hotel group — a group that took decades to build. Like other micro-capitalism success stories — Uber, Blablacar, KissKissBankBank, eBay, Zenpark, and others — Airbnb proves that a strong CRM strategy can disrupt industry giants, revolutionize our consumer habits, and do so with lower costs and limited investment.