Airbnb Has Car Rentals Now. What Does That Make It?

0:00Brandreth Canaley: ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.

1:02Brandreth Canaley: Good morning. Happy Monday.

1:06Michael Goldin: That's right. Best day of the week. And you two both have different backgrounds.

1:10Brandreth Canaley: We do. Well, first, welcome back, Jamie. We have missed you this month. You've been globetrotting, running around the country. So great to have you back. Excited to be back. Last week of my sabbatical, a month, July off, joining you guys here from my cabin up in North Georgia, getting some work done. I do have the kids with me. School doesn't start till next week. So if anyone jumps in. Criminal that these kids are starting school the first week of August. I just cannot wrap my mind around that.

1:48Michael Goldin: They got out in May. So that's true.

1:50Brandreth Canaley: That's true. I do want to give a quick note. Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

1:54Michael Goldin: Jamie, you're a month early on the it's August that you're supposed to take off. That's what I heard. That's Europe. You just front one Europeans. Yeah. U.S. takes July off. Just make sure no work gets done during the summer.

2:09Brandreth Canaley: Correct. Everybody's just out of office emails back and forth, back and forth. But I want to give a quick shout out. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, Sometimes when I'm at my house in the Adirondacks, my grandma joins us. So shout out to my grandma B who's sitting off to my right over here. She's a big fan of the podcast. So she's excited to be, she's our live audience today.

2:32Michael Goldin: Grandma B. Yeah.

2:34Brandreth Canaley: And I also want to give a shout out to Michael for throwing a really incredible retreat last week. We were down in Sarasota with 30 industry leaders, just having really incredible conversations, a great time, perhaps over-served on occasion.

2:53Michael Goldin: Speak for yourself.

2:56Brandreth Canaley: I get better speaking for myself.

2:58Michael Goldin: Well, yeah, it was a blast and appreciate your help in getting some key folks there as well. So really, really good time to just sit and dive into the space and so much is moving and so much is changing so rapidly, uh whether it's text tech or roll-ups ai it was those were all i think probably the three hottest topics of uh of the weekend but it was really a week we just call it the weekend because it felt

3:28Brandreth Canaley: like one i know it was kind of jarring when you're like oh tomorrow's wednesday and i'm going home yeah weird i'm so tired i'm so tired yeah but um yeah it's really it's great to get people from different corners of the industry, certainly people I haven't met before, which is also great. And then it's also funny when you're like, have I met you or have I just seen you on LinkedIn? So it's great to put real faces and actual conversations behind names that you see all the time.

3:57Michael Goldin: Yeah. And awesome for many of them commenting favorably on the show too. So hello, everybody. Thank you for tuning in.

4:07Brandreth Canaley: Awesome. Well, before we jump in, we have a couple of really exciting stories today, but we want to give a shout out to our sponsors at StayFive. StayFive helps short-term rental operators build direct guest relationships through branded Wi-Fi portals, email marketing, and guest data tools. The term one-time bookers introduce guests. Start growing your direct booking revenue today at stayfi.com slash good morning hospitality, or find that link in the show notes. So we have like big fun news today. It was breaking news. Yeah. Embargo lifted moments ago. And Michael, you're the one who brought the story.

4:39Brandreth Canaley: So take it away.

4:41Michael Goldin: Yeah. So the Sonder brand lives on and it didn't take long. A lot of times after these bankruptcies, things get tied up for a while. Sonder's epic meltdown was, I think, in November last year. And a company called Travel AI has just purchased the domain and branding behind Sonder. And if you don't know Travel.ai, they bought Kasai a year or two ago when Kasai went belly up. They like to buy very seasoned branded URLs and then turn them into grab B2B supply and turn it into an OTA. And I had no clue the scale of how many sites they actually ran. but Sean O 'Neill reported this morning that they have 530 consumer sites and they clear$750 million of gross bookings a year.

5:36Michael Goldin: So there are giants in the industry that, that aren't front and center that aren't putting their brand first and just power almost a billion dollars of travel a year. So congrats to you guys, The Sonder brand was excellent, and we know they dumped millions and millions and probably tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into the branding and URL trying to get it to work and get direct bookings. And now you get to draft off of that. So if you have any more details on it and want to share with us site traffic or purchase price for it, very curious, those two numbers.

6:17Brandreth Canaley: Yeah, I was. This reminded me of kind of when there was a the first round of collapse of the big VC funded companies. And when at Romi, we bought a bunch of Domio's IP and Domio, for whatever their faults, had really spectacular branding. And I remember we bought some of their IP. But one of those things was an app that they definitely spent at least a million dollars on. Like there's a group of people at Domeo that worked really, really hard on it and we bought it and then did nothing with it because it wasn't useful to us at that time. And it just made me think like people at these companies are working so hard on something and then it just kind of disappears into the ether.

6:59Brandreth Canaley: And then someone might pick it up and do they might do something with it. They might not. It's really, you know, you spend a lot of your time and your energy building things at companies. And then sometimes it just goes away. Or sometimes it now directs traffic to this huge organization. So, I mean, at least a little bit of their legacy continues to live on. Yeah. And you go to the site and it is, and with all of Travel AI, they sort of lean into a niche of that site. So whether it's stays for pets, stays on lakes, and whatever it is. And with Sonder, they're leaning in heavily into urban stays in the major cities.

7:38So what Sonder was known for. So whether it's major U.S. cities, European cities, and then you go on and it's inventory from booking Expedia, Vrbo. So definitely taking that playbook, leveraging the traffic. I think it's nice to see that Sonder is going to be in a net and revenue positive site first time in a while, probably. And, yeah, it's interesting to see another one of the brands that's been part of the industry and leveraged again for just the traffic that they're able to generate. So maybe, and is this ultimately just the graveyard of past VC-sunded companies in our space?

8:28Michael Goldin: A great business model, really, if you buy them for the right price. Yeah.

8:33Brandreth Canaley: I mean, think about all the work and all the money that Sonder put into building the reputation of that site. And now they're like, cool. I think they said 50 domains, 70 domains, 50 global trademark registrations. So again, a lot of money and a lot of effort were put into those and now they belong to Travel AI.

8:51Michael Goldin: And Saunders sales and marketing budget for 2024 as reported, and we know their reports were not always right, but$84 million spent on sales and marketing just in 2024. So grow that over the past decade when they were in business and they spent a lot of money on this site. So good purchase. Love to see it continuing on. And Travel AI is the giant that not many people pay too much attention to. But I guarantee you the Expedias and the Booking.coms love them.

9:30Brandreth Canaley: definitely well speaking of other otas um our next story is about airbnb uh we teased this previously about them getting into rental cars but they are partnering with car trawler for car rentals in five countries so that's the united states france italy spain and australia so if you're a customer in any of those markets you can now book airport pickups and other services um you know, including cars. So that's fun. I thought this was exciting to see who was powering it. Since at the product release, it was sort of, we have rental cars, but they didn't talk at all about who was powering behind it.

10:13So awesome job, Dennis, sort of getting the scoop on who was actually providing it. And Carl Trawler is like, I'm the probably number one B2B provider, of car rentals. So not a surprise. But I think the real scoop here is that they're under contract to be acquired by Expedia. So now it's going to be an essentially Expedia powering car rentals at Airbnb. And like how long, like, I suspect it's like, and they'll keep it going for a while. But Maybe the clock is now ticking on how quickly can Airbnb either build these own integrations to all the different brands themselves or find a different partner if they ultimately they don't want to be feeding Expedia's growth with their expansion into other services.

11:11Michael Goldin: It's all part of Expedia's B2B domination, just even power other OTAs. And we saw this with Hopper. Expedia powered so much of Hopper. And then one day they just decided, eh, enough. And it nearly bankrupted Hopper. And then they got sold off for parts to Citi. I think it was Citi or Chase, one or the other. But yeah, power move by Expedia. Interesting move by Airbnb. I mean, just another step to becoming an OTA. We talked about it a little bit before the show. I would venture to guess the vast majority of short-term rentals booked, at least in America, are drive-to destinations for individuals or families.

11:56And so I don't know how much an integration with car rentals is going to move the needle in a big way, but it's just one more signal that they know

12:09Michael Goldin: they have to become a full-fledged OTA than just a short-term mental platform. Yeah. And CarTrawler, I was doing some research, they essentially power all the car rentals on the airline sites. And to the extent that people were already bundling car rentals with their travel, and Airbnb dominates the cities, they dominate urban travel. And so a lot of people are, and they're using their uber to go but and the past month i've been on on the road in iceland and maine like i was staying in short-term rentals and we rented a car there's some countries that are just in even parts of the us you're going to drive out to glacier and stay in in short-term rentals you got to have a car if you're driving up to maine and staying in short-term rentals you gotta have a car like you're not using uber you're and um there's so many destinations like yeah if we're going to a conference like i'm gonna uber or i'm going to stay in a major city um and it makes sense but and even if you're flying down destin like you gotta have a car in that market and uber is not gonna be or lyft is not gonna be the primary mode of transportation if you're traveling with your family yeah one of the interesting things though

13:27Brandreth Canaley: to me about this, even though that, you know, we say that they power a lot of the other airline car rentals and things like that. I feel like for a public company like Airbnb, I mean, I guess the airlines are public, but it's not direct competitor. It would be a huge red flag that the person controlling a part of your service supply is another major public OTA. Like that just surprises me that that kind of like, I don't know, incestuous behavior is allowed. I don't know.

13:55Michael Goldin: Well, it's a great way to trial it without having to put a ton of money towards it.

14:00Brandreth Canaley: True, but isn't there another group that, like, there must be other ways, you know what I mean? Maybe not, maybe not.

14:08Michael Goldin: I mean, Turo seems like it fits the Airbnb brand the best, but... Yeah. And one, the transaction isn't done yet. So Expedia has announced that they're acquiring them, that it's not a done deal yet. So it's so much good for you. They're not under the sort of umbrella yet, but it is expected to close in the second half of the year. And that's going to be something for them to figure out. All right.

14:39Brandreth Canaley: Well, before we hop into our final World Cup data analysis, we want to give a shout out to our sponsors at Built. They're helping restaurants and hotel F &B teams better understand their guests and create more personalized experiences that drive repeat visits. So if you care about loyalty and guest experience, it's worth checking out. Head to joinbuilt.com slash GMH or find the link in the show notes. So, Jamie, your return from sabbatical came at a very opportune time for us to discuss the real aftermath that we've been talking about for months now about the World Cup. And what actually happened?

15:14Brandreth Canaley: was this the huge boon that everybody thought it was going to be? Yeah. One, did you guys watch the game? Yes. A good chunk of it. A good chunk of it. I thought it was pretty exciting, second half. Excited to see Spain eke it out at the end. Like, they're clearly the better team. Zero shots on goal from Argentina in the first 90 minutes is pretty crazy. It would have felt like Spain got robbed if Argentina sort of eked it out at the end, like in a shootout or something like that. I'm so excited that Spain won. Congratulations to them.

15:54Michael Goldin: And you're basically a Spanish company, too. So you got some happy team members over there. We are a Denver and New York based company with a large office in Spain. But yes, there are a lot of happy AirDNA employees. He's our CEO is a big Argentina fan.

16:13Brandreth Canaley: So it was really wild to me. The unsports, like how unprofessional and just straight up rude that team. I mean, it's I it's really I mean, under I know that that's like maybe the reputation, but man, you guys, they all make so much money. And it's just like you could love to see it. Scrap away, people. What?

16:38Michael Goldin: I love to see it.

16:40Brandreth Canaley: I was just like, you are, it's just so ridiculous. I don't know. Yeah.

16:49So I think this might be the last time we have to talk about data related to the World Cup. I think we've done it, what, 10, 15 different episodes over the past. Not when you learn on. But now we're getting the wrap up stories. So New York Times did a great wrap up story. Skift Bailey did a great wrap up story, both quoting a lot of AirDNA data that the team pulled while I was out. But let's start with hotels. So it did end up being a big boom for hotel revenue, especially in New York around the final. So in the lead up to it, hotel revenue was up 21%. Hotels in New Jersey saw revenues increase by more than$40 million.

17:45dollars. What was interesting with short-term rentals was we actually saw demand in the lead up and during the final actually down slightly in New York. There's just almost no short-term Airbnb Vrbo properties available in the city anymore given local law 18. But we saw demand in the early games up 24 % New Jersey and for the final up 37%. So it really was a boon for New Jersey short-term rentals. There was a big increase in supply up almost 30 % and then subsequent increase in demand. So that was awesome. But what I thought was really fun in the New York Times articles is they sort of went through all the different ways the World Cup sort of drove changes in traffic.

18:41So Times Square was packed with out-of-towners up 7%. I'm 305 ,000 pedestrians walking through Times Square. And you saw...

18:54Brandreth Canaley: Terrifying. Avoid, avoid. Avoid. You saw bars and restaurants sort of packed with watch parties and all sort of supporting their different teams. On-premise beer sales up 14%, which is incredible. You even saw City Bike had its biggest month ever. So you think about riding a bike around New York City in June and July, maybe not the best, but I know it was happening. And then my favorite, Tinder said they had a flood of out-of-town users up 35 % in New York around the Brazil-Mexico, our Morocco game. So definitely expanding the dating pool around the games. Temporarily.

19:53Michael Goldin: Brandy, can you confirm or deny?

19:56Brandreth Canaley: I played the fifth.

20:04Brandreth Canaley: I can only speak to Boston data. So, you know. Okay.

20:09Michael Goldin: Well, Jan Freytag in the skiffs write up had a good quote that I think kind of hammers it all home for us. The idea that we were going to have 104 Super Bowl ads all packed into one continuous demand story for four or five weeks, it's wildly optimistic. And I think if you look at the data from the U.S. versus past ones in Qatar or Russia, the amount of locals going to the games or even just the sizes of the cities that the games are being played in are exponentially larger. So to expect a wild boom and compare it to past ones is not a fair assessment, just like the Olympics probably won't be for L.A.

21:03Michael Goldin: When is that this summer? Next summer? 2028. Two summers from now. So these these are great events for the local economies. I'm curious what the F &B I mean, you mentioned beer sales was through the roof. Thank you, Scotland. Appreciate that. But I'm curious the impact it had on local businesses, people going to restaurants to watch games instead of the actual game. I'd suspect it was still a really, really strong economic turnout. out.

21:41Brandreth Canaley: Yeah, for sure. And then you also think about the there's a couple of things. First, FIFA is definitely the I think the source of pumping a lot of the expectations because it's part of the deal when they're going in to say, hey, you need to spend all this money on infrastructure and whatever, like you're going to make it back in this way, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it did seem there was just like this naive optimism in the beginning of like there was going going to be basically the equivalent of a super bowl or a taylor swift concert like every single day um and yeah there's a little bit of a reality check there but then there was you know the comment that there was this huge listing growth and and some of these cities and it's like yeah you know if kansas city is not accustomed to hosting events like this so obviously people are going to throw their stuff on airbnb or verbo or whatever mostly airbnb realistically And then in cities that have that like New York or LA that are that have the hotel capacity, you're probably not going to see as much either local regulations or because that they already it already exists there.

22:44Brandreth Canaley: Right. So I think some of the numbers always have to be taken with a grain of salt. Yeah. And Paul Manzi brings up a good point of just like the counterfactual, like how much better could it have been if like one brand USA had funding the past two years? If the reputation that the US had towards being welcoming, you're like, we remember. We only needed Freddie. We only needed Freddie. And Freddie, I do think, will pay dividends for some time of like all the everyone wanting to come and experience Waffle House and Buc-ee's. And I think he did a great job. Yeah, Costco, promoting the South, going to football games, going and even going to MLS and see the long term impact of international travelers coming to the States.

23:44But and you can't get around the fact that negative publicity of like, like, hey, you're going to get your phone checked on like what your social media posts are, even if that didn't come to fruition. Like it definitely ran through the news cycles across the European countries and just caused maybe a lot of people to think twice on whether they wanted to come or not.

24:07Brandreth Canaley: Yeah. Well, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Michael.

24:11Michael Goldin: I was going to move on to Freddie and the man we all needed. Yeah. So if you don't know who Freddie is, you're living under a rock. But also no one actually knows who Freddie is, except this German guy that came over with a couple of his buddies and was authentically documenting and like truthfully in all of various parts of America. And he started in Tennessee or North Carolina and then worked his way through Georgia, stopped in my town of Auburn and went to the Messi game, Argentina versus Iceland, the last warm up, made his way to New Orleans. By then he was like gaining steam and he went from 4 ,000 followers to 400 ,000 followers.

24:59Brandreth Canaley: Can you imagine how dramatic that is for him? Like all of a sudden, like one day you're like, wow, like so many people are listening to me basically.

25:05Michael Goldin: And the New Orleans Saints invite him into their practice facility and show him around. And then J.J. Watt puts him up in a five-star hotel in Houston. And all this time, he was saying no to brand deals, no to private flights. like one of the casinos tried to send him a jet to go visit him and he's like no thanks i'm going to drive from texas to oklahoma that's all i want to do uh and he uh i don't ella langley i guess is the musician that he fell in love with and went to one of her concerts and anyway he just highlighted one an entire segment of america that europeans don't visit you know they go to new york they go go to Chicago, LA, Miami, and DC.

25:57Michael Goldin: And that's it. If you're not one of those cities, then you're not going there. And a couple of weeks ago, or maybe even last week, Brandy and I talked about Barcelona limiting travelers is probably a good thing for everyone else except for Barcelona, because then the travel goes to the Spanish versions of Chattanooga and New Orleans and Atlanta, right? You see a whole different segment of the country and in many ways, a more authentic and real part of how people live. And the sentiment also of Americans' view on Germany increased by 13 points because of Freddie. So his impact is not just felt in America, but felt in Germany.

26:43Michael Goldin: And these are the real stories that I wish news would just cover, because to Jamie's point, they're out there telling you, you're going to go to jail. If you try and come into the country, it's just not true. And it's just all fear mongering and it's all politics. And Freddie's the man that we all needed and we didn't know.

27:04Brandreth Canaley: Yeah. I like that. He didn't take a brand deals. He didn't get correct. That's a, I, the thing is, I feel like if he was an American influencer, they've been like, absolutely get me on that jet to the wind. so it's nice to see that he was sticking to he was like because i also think about it like when else are they going to have an opportunity to just drive like that like i'm going to drive for 18 hours it's going to be absolutely flat and i'm still going to be i'm going to be one state over like it's just it's an expanse that like is really hard to grasp i even think like for americans if you haven't been to that part of the country like how vast it is is pretty pretty impressive.

27:46And just like, I saw one of his latest threads on just, I'm traveling on a budget of like walking through like how much it actually spent on like, and it wasn't a whole lot like you're you're driving, you're even staying in budget hotels, primarily, like, and it wasn't a major expense to go and spend on a month plus traveling around the US and made it look very accessible. You don't have to be going to the Wynn and partying at XS or whatever the clubs are. And you can go to Buc-ee's. You can go to an MLS game. You can go to some of these things that I'm really, and it's what the average American is doing every day.

28:32And it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to really see the country.

28:37Brandreth Canaley: Yeah.

28:38Michael Goldin: And really what pulled out with him was how authentic it was. And it was like, you know, very Germanic as well. Just matter of fact of this is, this is crazy. The European mind cannot comprehend this. Yeah.

28:52Brandreth Canaley: I thought that was that the air conditioning quote? Cause that really killed me when they were in the, he's like, it's so hot outside. And then he goes, I'm freezing. It's just like this entire stadium is air conditioned. Don't think about the environmental impact.

29:07Michael Goldin: Well, yes. So I think this will hopefully cause not just Brand USA, but other nations to look at their ad budget and tour budget and not send it all to New York City that likes travelers, but they don't like short term rentals or to Barcelona that doesn't want you there. Uh, so just, I don't know if you can actually replicate it except for the fact of quietly promoting, um, the, the actual people doing the actual traveling, telling the real stories.

29:47Brandreth Canaley: Yeah, exactly. Well, um, that is a wrap on today's episode. What do you guys have coming up this week? Michael, same old, same old.

29:59Michael Goldin: Well, today's my birthday. So surprise. The kids are super excited. They're at the most fun age where they think the world of dad and wake up and are just so excited that it's your birthday.

30:16Brandreth Canaley: Did you get breakfast in bed?

30:18Michael Goldin: No, I got up to have coffee before the kids got up. That's more important. Well, happy birthday.

30:26Brandreth Canaley: Maybe you're not at the they're not at the age yet where you can get a actually well cooked meal in bed.

30:32Michael Goldin: Yeah, without spilling coffee, walking down the stairs and all of that egg shell in the eggs. But, yeah, we might pop down to Dolphin Island sometime this week if we can catch a window. But other than that, one of the last weeks of summer school starts for us next week as well. The end of next week.

30:54Brandreth Canaley: Are you excited about that?

30:56Michael Goldin: Yes, yes. I now understand why parents loved school going back and just hating it. Jamie? Yeah, so this is my last week off. I'm back to work next week. So as I said, I've got the kids up at the cabin today. We're just dropping some stuff off, installing a puzzle table, and we're lacking a good spot to do puzzles, which was sorely needed up here. But we're going to go gold mining as soon as we get done with that and then go do pirate mini golf. And then I've got a long list of things that my wife has come up with me to do this last week before I go back to work. So it is a last week off of work.

31:50Yeah.

31:51Michael Goldin: Beautiful. Are you going to Dahlonega or are you just going to get a pen? And then we're going to go to a gold mining spot in Helen. So near Dahlonega, but not all the way in. That'll be fun. It will be.

32:04Brandreth Canaley: Maybe you'll find enough gold and you can retire.

32:09Michael Goldin: Billions of gold was pulled out of North Georgia. We have tried to pan the creek that is on the property. We have found nothing so far, but we're still hopeful.

32:23Brandreth Canaley: keep trying yeah amazing well yeah i'm gonna i'm off to uh new jersey for a meeting um today and then i'll be back up here because i have a pretty huge family reunion this weekend um around 300 of my extended family and i am helping cook food for all those people so um it's my cousin andre's

32:50Michael Goldin: over here.

32:52Brandreth Canaley: Yeah. He's it's really, it's really going to be kind of crazy. I was looking at like the RSVP ticket ticker and I was like, Oh my God, so many people, we have a band and some DJs and it'll be fun. And you know, it's going to be what it is. It's going to happen. So wish me luck.

33:08Michael Goldin: Do you know half of them?

33:11Brandreth Canaley: Yeah, I do. I would say there's definitely a younger generation right now that's like in their teens and maybe early twenties where I'm like, Ooh, I got to like really double down on that. And then usually like people, sometimes people have like weeks during the year that they come up that I'm not here, but because this is, it's a 175th anniversary. So it's like a big deal. So a lot of people are making the point to come this weekend. So there's just some people I might not have seen in a decade. Um, so a lot of, um, how are you and who are you going on? So yeah, it'll be fun. We're going to, we're trying to get a family picture if I can corral all these people into one location.

33:49So awesome. Yeah.

33:52Brandreth Canaley: Well, thanks to everyone, especially Paul as always, and be our, our live in studio member for tuning in. And thank you all for listening. We will see you next week.

34:32Brandreth Canaley: ZS is a global consulting and technology firm that partners with companies to improve life and how we live it. Working with the world's top hospitality brands, ZS brings together data, science, technology, and human ingenuity to transform ideas into customer loyalty. They're ready to help you elevate guest experiences, improve operations, and uncover preferences and motivations through their AI-powered solutions. With more than 1 ,700 clients in over 170 countries, ZS has built the expertise, fortitude, and vision to help you deliver impact right where it matters.