En being one of the major sponsors of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) during the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Airbnb platform has established itself as a leader in tourist accommodation in a global metropolis. which has nevertheless done a lot, for several years, to constrain and prohibit it.
Even before the start of the historic mega-event for France, it can already be considered, from the multinational’s point of view, as a resounding success. The number of rental companies and properties offered has significantly increased, even if there is a relatively large proportion of occasional or pragmatic guests who will unsubscribe as soon as the last tests are over, reservations have exploded and the image of the brand is assured …
Even better than the profits earned or the advertising achieved for the years to come, the company will certainly succeed in its bet of massively investing in the French capital during the duration of the competition, while the open conflict with the Parisian municipality has been hindering for a long time. its ambitions and will soon force it to (re)think its strategy.
The essential role of hosts
But the Olympics are also revealing of the place that Airbnb occupies in our contemporary Western societies, offering in some way a condensed illustration of its functioning and its evolution. While the firm will return in the summer of 2024 to its initial core business, which gave birth to it in 2007 – the provision of thousands of accommodations during a major event (cultural, sporting, professional, scientific, etc.) – it has since taken over other fields, other spaces, other uses, and has won over other users willingly or unwillingly.
Tourists, of course, but also students who can no longer find accommodation by other means, sometimes because of a housing crisis worsened by Airbnb itself, seasonal workers, migrants, family caregivers, partygoers, etc.
Moreover, alongside various events (intra-family religious festivals, private and public micro-events, events of all types on a regional, national and international scale, etc.), the company has redeployed itself to be present “all the time “, resulting from a desynchronization of accommodation practices, and “everywhere at once”, in spaces where the degree of urbanity is more or less strong: small, medium and large towns, villages, coastlines, mountains, even in cold and hot deserts.
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