Not sure how it extracts 80% of the value of a hotel chain — from what I've seen, estimates place the average AirBNB night at ~$80, which would mean AirBnB gets ~$10/stay.
I don't think I've ever seen a hotel night, outside of a hostel, for $12.
(And I'm not trying to say it is a bad business at all — non-customer-acqusition costs probably go down by a larger % than revenue.)
They get $10/stay and the cost to AirBnB is fixed at whatever it costs to run the computer systems.
Effectively, their profit is $10 per stay and their expenses border on $0.
The valuation is a bet on a YouTube exit. Most of YouTube was massive copyright violations (still is) and was a massive bandwidth cost sink (suspect it still is), but since Google bought them out that doesn't matter anymore. In fact, YouTube is a gigantic brake on innovation in the video side of the web precisely because they choke off any useful profitable business models.
Similarly, if AirBnB can get somebody big to buy them out before the lawsuits overrun them, cha-ching, go the owners and initial investors.
Totally agree, but the parent said that AirBNB gets 80% of the value (revenue) of a hotel chain. That's just false — the host gets ~85% of the value, not AirBnB.
I don't think I've ever seen a hotel night, outside of a hostel, for $12.
(And I'm not trying to say it is a bad business at all — non-customer-acqusition costs probably go down by a larger % than revenue.)