Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is already excited for Paris to host the Summer Olympics in 2024 followed by Los Angeles in 2028.
The co-founder of the home-sharing service tweeted this week to congratulate those respective cities, along with French President Emmanuel Macron and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, for their winning bids with the International Olympic Committee. Chesky added on Twitter that the “Airbnb community” is eager to host the likely influx of Olympic tourists, even if the prospect of Airbnb helping book customers in those cities is still years away.
Read Chesky’s tweet:
Bravo @paris2024 & @LACity@EmmanuelMacron, @MayorOfLA, our @Airbnb community looks forward to welcoming guests to the Games in your cities
— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) September 13, 2017
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Airbnb followed up Chesky’s tweet with a formal letter to the City of Los Angeles with a report that outlines how Airbnb can help “extend the capacity for the city” by bolstering L.A.’s hospitality industry with its own network of housing options, from shared rooms to short-term house rentals. According to Airbnb, roughly 85,000 people used its service to secure housing during last year’s Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro (out of the estimated 500,000 visitors who traveled to Brazil for the two-week event). That would be roughly 17% of tourists making use of Airbnb, which was named the “official alternative accommodation services supplier” for those games by the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee.
Not surprisingly, Airbnb is looking to cozy up to Olympic organizers in future host cities for major events that should only boost the startup’s business. Airbnb notes in the report that the company currently has about 17,000 Airbnb hosts in Los Angeles, who welcomed 1.25 million visitors from August 2016 to August 2017, while Paris has even more, with 86,000 hosts and 2.5 million guests over that year-long period.
Airbnb is also gearing up for Olympic events that are nearer on the horizon, including 2018’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The company said it has signed an agreement with local officials in Korea to expand its number of available listings in the area before the event starts in February.