From Forbes: Airbnb wants to become the go-to place for anyone booking a trip—even if they want to stay in a hotel. The company, which built a business valued at $31 billion by matching travelers to homeowners with a room to spare, said Thursday it plans to acquire last-minute booking platform HotelTonight.
Airbnb will continue to run the HotelTonight brand, including its website and booking app. HotelTonight’s CEO, Sam Shank, will now run Airbnb's luxury hotel business line, and most of the company’s employees will be joining Airbnb, which did not disclose the price of the deal.
It’s a symbolic acquisition for the peer-to-peer travel company that has been in a love-hate relationship with the hotel industry for years. Even as Airbnb and the hotel industry have waged acrimonious fights in cities like New York over the past 10 years, it has gradually warmed up to at least the boutique and luxury hotel industry. In February 2018, Airbnb announced that hotels would be a separate category on its website. At the time, it already had 24,000 boutique hotel rooms and over 180,000 B&Bs. Those numbers have more than doubled in the past year, according to Airbnb.
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