Airbnb Luxe came out on Tuesday morning, after a long time, with 2,000 new listings on the Airbnb website offering guests the chance to stay in some of the world’s most extravagant homes . It rents from entire islands to castles and medieval mansions with water slides, dinosaur skulls and archery galleries. The average price is about 12,000 euros per week , but it can reach a million euros per week for a private atoll, near Tahiti, comprising 21 bungalows and 50 people at your service.
Nukutepipi Atoll, French Polynesia
“Luxury travelers have been looking at high-end rentals,” says Nick Guezen, Airbnb’s global director of technical strategy. But the market hasn’t offered enough security to high-profile, mega-rich customers looking for privacy , he says. “I think that’s something that was missing: the idea of ’I want to travel to a luxury home, but I’m not sure where to find it or who to trust.'”
This is not entirely true, though, considering that Accor SA’s Onefinestay, second-home rental platform ThirdHome, and apartment rental company Paris Perfect are established competitors in the market. And Airbnb Luxe itself is essentially a rebranding of Luxury Retreats, a Canadian company that specializes in high-end spaces and was acquired by Airbnb, in 2017, for around $260 million . None of the listings on Luxe are new , just that they now fall under the Airbnb umbrella.
The company bets on the strength of its brand to give it a competitive advantage.
“People are growing up with Airbnb,” says Eshan Ponnadurai, director of the global luxury market for Airbnb. “Someone who started 20 years renting a room for 80 euros, now has more money and may want a room for 900 euros a night.”
Te Kahu, Wanaka, New Zealand
Because Airbnb has become part of the cultural dialogue, renting a home to a stranger has also become legitimized in a sociological sense, even for the super-rich, says New York University professor Arun Sundararajan, an expert on the sharing economy. “In the past, those who owned multimillion-dollar properties might have been reluctant to share them with strangers, but today, most people know someone who has used Airbnb,” he says. “It is considered a more normal activity and that reduces the barriers to renting a more expensive house.”
In 2017, only 36% of wealthy travelers (with incomes over €100,000), surveyed by Skift Research, said they had stayed in alternative accommodation or home rentals. This year, that number has risen sharply to 59%.
Legitimacy of luxury
Since its founding in 2008, Airbnb has revolutionized the travel industry, challenging large hotel chains and travel companies like Booking Holdings Inc., while drawing the ire of cities around the world, which seek to take over crack down on illegal rentals and deal with rising rents.
Conquering the luxury rental market will allow Airbnb to market itself as a company that can not only meet official standards, but also cater to the world’s wealthiest — and most discerning — travelers. “This is the way for a luxury traveler to book a home without worry or hassle,” says Guezen. “We can give them something that has been tested and that they can trust.”
Chateau d’Estoublon, La Provence, France
In April, it took over 10 floors of New York’s 75 Rockefeller Plaza with plans to turn it into 200 apartment-style suites. In May, Airbnb brought high-profile luxury executive Angela Ahrendts to its board of directors. Ahrendts, 58, spent five years overhauling Apple Inc.’s retail operations, and before that he built Burberry into a global luxury brand.
This new level of luxury also represents a lucrative source of income , even if the 2,000 properties on Luxe seem small in proportion to the more than 6 million available on the general web. Airbnb takes a percentage of the price of each booking it arranges, so more expensive inventory drives higher margins and helps justify the company’s $31 billion valuation.
Represents a lucrative source of income
Under Airbnb Luxe, the entire fee comes from the owners and the percentage depends on the market and the type of association with them, Guezen explains, but declines to give details, since the fees vary too much between properties. The global luxury travel market is worth more than €170 billion, and analysts expect it to continue to grow.
Travel designers
The biggest difference between Luxe and Airbnb — or the higher version, Airbnb Plus — is the free access to a travel organizer: from check-in logistics, to specific local experiences and other services such as babysitting, private chefs or catering services. massages (while new to Airbnb, this type of service, similar to that provided by Onefinestay’s exclusive concierges, is standard in luxury home rentals).
Chateau d’Estoublon, La Provence, France
Airbnb’s 20 travel designers will be available 24 hours a day to provide VIP support. Some have already made strange requests during Luxe’s pilot phase, such as building a temporary basketball court in Los Cabos, Mexico for an NBA player, or cordoning off a section of jungle in Tulum for a family of High standing could dive in the caves in private.
Owners or their representatives must register to be part of the de Luxe. Each property is reviewed by an in-house team that looks at a 300-point checklist, examining everything from the design of the home and its architecture to the quality of its linens and the water pressure in its showers. Listings include the Villa Fleming in Jamaica, where Ian Fleming wrote his James Bond novels, and a medieval castle in the Tuscan countryside with nearly 15 square miles of land for hiking and harvesting local produce.
The Fleming Villa, Oracabessa, Jamaica
Many of the houses are owned by wealthy families , including billionaires and celebrities, Guezen says. Some own multiple properties around the world, renting as many as half a dozen of them through the site, she says. To protect the host’s privacy, guests are never told who the owner is, and anything that could personally identify them, such as a photograph or postal mail, is removed.
