Who does Airbnb consider as customers? Travellers or hosts? 🤔
I know that sounds like some weird riddle.. but a genuine question I have!
When a company like Airbnb thinks about its customer acquisition process, how would they split the hosts and travellers? Would they need to carry out a separate customer discovery process for the hosts as the product would also need to cater to their requirements too?
Forgive me if these are stupid questions to ask - looking forward to hearing anyone's thoughts.
Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace, which means that they have 2 audiences, guests (demand) and hosts (supply). A good rule of thumb for two-sided marketplaces is to treat your demand side as your primary customer. Why? There will always be people who want to make money, and fewer people who want to spend money.
Despite guests being the main customer, Airbnb still dedicates considerable resources to making sure hosts have a good experience. Investing in hosts grows supply and makes it more likely they are able to give their guests a good experience as far as finding the perfect place to stay.
As others have said, it's a marketplace. I think of it like eBay. Hosts (sellers) come there to sell (rent-out) their properties. Travellers (customers) come to Airbnb (the marketplace) to see what they have in their catalogue and buy (rent).
The marketplace takes a cut for providing the service, and undertakes safety and quality checks to ensure that they're helping to sell anything illegal, unsafe, or poor value.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO, featured a couple of times on Kara Swisher's Recode Decode podcast. This one had some insights into the checks they undertake, if you're interested:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/after-deadly-shooting-how-is-airbnb-going-to-keep-its/id1011668648?i=1000456226763
Hey jaymie, I appreciate your input here. I listened to the podcast and it was really interesting. It seems like a two-sided marketplace is a challenging yet exciting place to be - easy to get caught out for not considering the customer(s) at every step.
Airbnb's customers are the hosts because that's where they get their revenues from (a commission). On the other hand, the host's customers are the travellers (for the same reason).
In the early days, they encouraged their hosts to post their Airbnb profiles on Craigslist. Pre-Airbnb, hosts just posted on Craigslist but Airbnb's value proposition to early hosts was that they can provide a more professional looking page for travellers (and that's how Airbnb was born).
If you want to know more about their story, you listen to Brian Chesky's interview with Reid Hoffman for Masters of Scale (it's a podcast available on Spotify).
Hi George! Airbnb considers travellers as their customers and Hosts as their suppliers. That is the usual trend or nomination in marketplaces but feel free to name it whatever you want after all, it's your sheet :)
I have also noticed you are a product manager, do you mind me asking if you have any coding skills and what languages do you feel comfortable using? Thanks.
Hello samourfelli, thanks for your response!
I actually do not have much coding experience, I get by mainly with general HTML knowledge. This is definitely something I am looking to work on though. Are you a product manager too?
I am a bit of everything! I founded my own marketplace which is similar to Airbnb and I am looking for a CTO with strong coding skills.
If you go to their website, the most prominent thing is making reservations for a visit. That would imply that guests are the primary customers. But they also have a "Become a host" link right up top so they would be the secondary customer.
Short answer: Both.
Some marketplaces or platform-based businesses even have more than two audiences. It's a common practice but some hard to execute.
You will need to expect a lot of "chicken-egg" problems that impact your customer acquisition strategy and how you prioritize product features.
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