Airbnb continues to make moves signaling a desire for greater control over the properties listed on its platform.
The home-sharing industry leader has acquired Luckey Homes, a company based in France that provides property management services for residences used as short-term rentals, Skift reports. Acquiring a company rather than partnering with it is somewhat of a rarity for Airbnb, according to Luckey, but the company's location is less surprising.
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Paris is Airbnb's most lucrative market in the world, but the city has been working to crack down on short-term rentals this year in a trend that has extended to several U.S. cities. In July, the company announced a partnership with realty firm Century 21 to offer apartment leases with explicit terms for home-sharing, possibly as a way to appease the landlords who are often aligned with pushes for regulation.
Luckey will operate as an independent division of Airbnb, with all of its workers now officially employees of the latter. It is unknown at this time whether the purchase was driven more by the desire to acquire Luckey's software or its management service, which assists short-term rental hosts with listing their properties, guest entry and exit, unit cleaning and other landlord issues that some tenants may not be familiar with.
Properties managed through Luckey will continue to be listed not just on Airbnb, but competitor sites like Booking.com and Homeaway, Skift reports. Luckey currently operates in 20 different French cities, but was looking to scale globally, according to a statement provided to Skift.
Airbnb has inched closer to direct property management in the past couple of years, most significantly with its Niido Powered by Airbnb enterprise. That venture builds or renovates apartment buildings to be more integrated with the home-sharing model.
Early in December, the company announced the creation of Backyard, a new venture from its futures division called Samara. Backyard will play around with multiple forms of home and multifamily building, not exclusively for short-term rentals.
