Short-term rental listing service Airbnb has been expanding its services as of late, with the company introducing Airbnb Trips last month that allow travellers to book tours, restaurant reservations and other travel services. If reports from Bloomberg are to be believed, Airbnb’s next step would be its most ambitious yet, as it appears that the company intends to let travellers book a flight from the service itself.
According to people who are familiar with the plans, Airbnb is currently developing a flight-booking feature that is internally known as Flights. While development of Flights is still in its early stages, Airbnb is looking to get the service up and running before it pursues an initial public offering. This is expected to happen within the next 18 months. In order to break into the market, Airbnb may decide to acquire an online travel agency or license data from a provider.
If Airbnb’s Flight service does go online, the company will be competing directly with established flight booking services like Priceline and Expedia. More recently, Google’s parent company Alphabet has moved into the space as well, and Google has since introduced Google Flights to the public. It’ll be interesting to see if Airbnb will be able to come up with a unique flight booking experience, or if the Flight service will be little more than a flight ticket price aggregator.
Source: Bloomberg