Specialist
Former Senior Executive, Corporate Development at Airbnb Inc
Agenda
- Airbnb's operating environment, examining growth runway for shared accommodations
- Impact on Expedia's (NASDAQ: EXPE), Booking Holdings' (NASDAQ: BKNG) and other OTA booking volumes, take rates and conversion rates
- Growth potential for corporate bookings
- 2019-20 outlook – potential IPO, M&A opportunities, supply inventory maintenance
Questions
1.
What is your industry-wide overview for online travel and alternative accommodations? Which trends or drivers do you think investors should be paying attention to right now?
2.
How would you frame the TAM in front of Airbnb, what are the factors playing into that? What are your thoughts on how TAM growth is driven by vertical expansion, international growth or other factors?
3.
How do you size the alternative growth segments, such as the things Airbnb has been a first mover on relative to the hotel market? Does it double the TAM, do you have any contextual guidance about that?
4.
The hotels market was driven a lot by supply and demand dynamics, does this still play into how the players are driving through the environment? Or are supply and demand mismatches not as big of a risk as before?
5.
Do you think Airbnb is better positioned to penetrate into the hotel market or are OTAs better positioned to penetrate into alternative accommodations?
6.
What are the differentiating factors between accommodation providers to really be aware of? Especially if inventory will not be that much of a differentiating factor long term, as you said. Previous Interviews (see Third Bridge Forum transcript: Booking Holdings – Hotels & Alternative Accommodation– 7 June 2019) suggest that even Expedia and Booking are significantly overlapped, what do you think?
7.
Which areas of OTA’s businesses might come under pressure as Airbnb increasingly moves into the hotel market which OTAs have a lot of exposure to? Perhaps thinking about volumes, take rates or customer acquisition costs? Broadly speaking, how does that evolve as Airbnb continues to penetrate?
8.
Does anything lead you to believe that Airbnb’s entrance might put any sort of profound pressure on Expedia vs Booking vs Trip vs other OTAs? Or will pressure be felt quite equally across the industry?
9.
It appears that direct bookings is quite a trend in the OTA industry. Do you consider Airbnb’s growth to be a threat to the likes of a Hilton or a Marriott, or will it be more in the form of a partnership? How do you expect it to evolve?
10.
Do you have any additional commentary about Airbnb’s current positioning? Is it exposed to any immediate threats or opportunities, any core parts of the business model to highlight or call into question?
11.
What are your thoughts around Airbnb’s management team and their strategy so far? What would you do differently or how do you anticipate them to act?
12.
Are there any areas which Airbnb has yet to penetrate, are there any sizable opportunities?
13.
What do you think are the main drivers behind Airbnb’s recent 31% YoY total bookings value growth, recorded at USD 9.4bn? What do you expect in terms of being driven by the traditional business vs moving into hotels, moving into corporate bookings or other noteworthy offerings?
14.
What are your thoughts on Airbnb’s HotelTonight acquisition? Are any significant changes needed to improve its positioning as a credible alternative to a Bookings and Expedia in the hotel world?
15.
What are your thoughts about the likely need to increase SEM [search engine marketing] costs or supply acquisition costs in general as you get into a hotel market given it is that rather saturating from a growth perspective? What is the long-term outlook for the business and the main value proposition for entering it at this point?
16.
Do you think Airbnb’s growth will likely come at the expense of OTAs? Especially given the growth outlook for the industry as a whole. How would you assess Airbnb’s potential to gain share for the hotel market?
17.
What are the main drivers within your expectations for industry take rates? How might a competitor under or overperform? Where do you expect take rates to settle once it’s all said and done?
18.
You mentioned how corporate bookings were starting to grow towards industry standard levels in terms of the overall online travel pie. What would the margin implications be if Airbnb is able to successfully gain traction there?
19.
How does Airbnb differ on a demographic basis? Is this a meaningful thing to note, in terms of whether it’s business vs leisure or age or wealth and how that compares across the industry? How can that be optimised?
20.
Do you hope to see any sort of retention stickiness investments? All players appear to be grappling with loyalty, what user engagement metrics would be most useful and should Airbnb eventually go public in tracking its success there?
21.
What are your thoughts about international market growth opportunities for Airbnb? Which geographies should we be paying attention to? How should we think about regulatory headwinds or penetration challenges?
22.
When thinking about product technology investment, you indicated a spend battle in terms of search engine marketing. What gives you confidence in Airbnb’s ability to weather that relative to other OTAs? Is it a greater lifetime value of the customer?
23.
Are you aware of any drivers of historical M&A strategy that we have yet to discuss? What are the implications for potential M&A activity for Airbnb? You mentioned flights could be something to buy into, do you have any further thoughts about future M&A possibilities?
24.
Do you have any commentary around how you see cities trying to limit Airbnb growth playing out? Has that largely come and gone or do you expect more of this to occur as it continues to grow?
25.
We alluded to a potential IPO, any thoughts around a likely timeline? What are the factors driving how far that gets pushed out? Broadly speaking, what are the best ways to approach valuation for the business, whether it’s an EBITD, EBITDA multiple or otherwise?
26.
What is your outlook for the industry as a whole, how do you see online travel and alternative accommodations panning out over the next one, three, five years? Any thoughts on winners and losers? How are you assessing Google and Amazon dipping their toes into this?
27.
Do you think there are any assumptions we should be challenging either about Airbnb or about the industry as a whole?
28.
Do you have any closing remarks about Airbnb or the industry as a whole?
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