HOMEWORK CHAPTER 1

CASE STUDY: THE RISE OF A UNICORN – AIRBNB

Question 1: Carry out a ‘three-horizons’ analysis (Section 1.2.1) of Airbnb, in terms of both
existing activities and possible future ones. How might this analysis affect its future strategic
direction?

- Horizon 1: Airbnb provided an online booking platform that allows people to share their
property (house/private rooms/hotel room) to others for a short time.
- Horizon 2: Airbnb was moving forward from an accommodation booking platform to a
platform that allows its customers to book local experiences and restaurants. The company
has also created an online community through Open Homes which provide temporary
housing for individuals affected by disaster, for medical relief and to refugees.
- Horizon 3: Airbnb was moving towards becoming an all in one travel platform. It could be
profitable if they could partner up with other brands and provide travel and holiday
packages along with long experiences.

Question 2: Using the headings of environments, strategic capability, strategic purpose and
culture seen in Section 1.3.1, identify key positioning issues for Airbnb and consider their
relative importance.

- Environments: Airbnb is facing the argument that they were dangerous and unsafe in terms
of health and safety and quality assurance as it was unregulated. Besides, ‘illegal hotel law’
was passed preventing people from subletting apartments within specified number of days.
- Strategic capability: Their main strategic capability is that allows people to rent out their
living space that makes there short period renting affordable and accessible. Thanks for
this strategic they got over 40 million guests in 34,000 cities
- Culture: Airbnb is aware of the fact they have to manage their culture more deliberately
and invented notion of ‘elephants, dead fish and the vomit’ needs to be aired. ‘Elephants
are the big things in the room that nobody is talking about, dead fish are the things that
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 happened a few years ago that people can’t get over, and vomit is that sometimes people
just need to get something off their mind and you need someone to just sit there and listen’.

Question 3: Following on from the previous questions and making use of Section 1.3.2, what
alternative strategies do you see for Airbnb?

In my opinion, they should solve their problems about health and safety for
accommodations. They can setting and monitoring quality standards for the accommodations can
certainly improve customer experience. To grow up the travel service they can co-operate with
airlines to provide complete holiday packages.