Since Airbnb kicked off in August 2008, the company has seen massive success in terms of visibility, reach, and growth. Within just four years, the platform placed its fifth millionth stayover night. In 2017 the company's revenue reached 2.6 BUSD. But keep in mind that this is only an estimated 18% of the turn-over that the hosts make. So Airbnb is the spearhead of a business with over 14 BUSD of revenue. The platform's operating profit is a bit more than 3% of that gross volume.
And, as soon as something like this happens, there will be thousands of people posting statements like this: "Airbnb is the largest hotel company without owning any real estate."
However, the only hotel activity of the early Airbnb was the loft apartment in San Francisco that Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia put an air mattress in and rented it out. At that moment they were hosts, operating a makeshift guesthouse, just with a worse than usual bed. Since that worked, they quickly decided that other people could do the same and that a placement service with a web page could facilitate that. In other words, Airbnb is what so many "new business model" companies are: a matchmaker.
Matchmaking is as old as civilization. One of the earliest known - almost mythical - matchmakers was Yue Lao ( 月下老人 ), the "Old Man," whose gift was to analyze what would be the best fit between the pools of unmarried women and men in his home town of Songcheng, China. We talk Tang Dynasty - around 650 CE, or 7th century. Just imagine that Lao Yue would have had a computerized database, instead of using his marriage listings book. And that his ability to sort out the best matches, could have been forged into an algorithm.
Well, we could call this a dating app. It doesn't change the fact that matchmakers then and today ask for a commission, and that is their business model. They know as many people who have something, as they know people who need just that. They match them and charge a fee. When my parents took me for the first vacation ever - I was five years old - they decided to take our newly acquired automobile and go up to the German Northsea coast. Arriving there, we realized that there were not too many hostels with vacancies. However, fortunately, the town did have a tourism office, where a friendly clerk matched our needs with an offering of a supplier, who had the provervial last bed available. A farmer's family, who for the first time, rented out a room in their farmhouse. With breakfast. You could call it a Farm, Bed & Breakfast. It was an experiment for them and my family, as well. We still go there, after 47 years.