AIRBNB: A CLEAR EXAMPLE OF INNOVATION AND SUCCESS “Air Bed and Breakfast”

Airbnb is a startup based “on trust”, according to the brand’s own words. In the marketplace in which this company operates, people publish, discover and book accommodations all over the world, and can find some truly unique ones that will enhance the tourist experience.

Airbnb stands for “Air Bed and Breakfast”. This company was developed as a project based on persistence, creativity and the ability to detect the problem and the need of the population.

Nathan Blecharczyk founded Airbnb with his two partners, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. The idea for the project came about when Gebbia and Chesky bought three extra beds to accommodate people in their small apartment located in San Francisco, California. They added breakfast service to the offer, which is where the name of the company, Airbnb, came from.

However, the initial project to develop a website to offer timely accommodation failed. After a season of continuous attempts that did not work, they decided to use a technique used in the innovation processes of companies, known as Design Thinking.

The main objective of this technique is to satisfy customer needs. It is composed of logic, imagination, intuition and systematic reasoning, to examine the possibilities of what can be done, and to design results that help users. Analysis and imagination are the basis of this methodology.

So, after empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing, the creators of Airbnb decided to be the company’s customers for the first time. That is, they visited and stayed in different homes offered by Air Bed and Breakfast. In this way they were able to understand and detect the needs of their customers.

After making several visits to the accommodations, they felt they were in the real world, and so they were able to confront the problems. Once the problems were identified, they set out to find what creative, innovative and cost-effective solutions could eliminate these problems and thus succeed in their venture.

They then looked at what could be improved, such as increasing the quality, quantity and variety of photographs of the homes. By improving this, within a week the business figures had doubled.

Story selection. Of this company for this article is based on the fact that it is a clear example of success. It is a completely innovative case. Since, the sector in which Airbnb moves, is a very developed sector and with many years and where many entrepreneurs have failed.

Reaching Airbnb’s figures has not been easy. The company currently offers accommodation in 57,000 cities in almost 200 countries and accumulates around 500,000 overnight stays per night.

Airbnb: The world’s largest real estate rental company with exactly zero properties of its own.