Joie de Vivre Hospitality founder Chip Conley joined Airbnb as Head of Global Hospitality

Kicks off Global Hospitality Campaign to Educate and Empower Host Community

San Francisco, Calif., 2013-09-30 — /travelprnews.com/ — Airbnb, the community marketplace to list, discover and book unique accommodations around the world, today announced that Chip Conley, founder of the award-winning, boutique hotel company, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, has joined the company as the Head of Global Hospitality. For the past 27 years Chip has been a force of innovation in the hospitality industry, he’s overseen the creation and management of 52 boutique hotels and won numerous awards for innovation in customer service and leadership.

As Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality, Chip’s first major initiatives will be the creation of a Hospitality Lab in Dublin, Ireland and the development of a training program to support cohesive standards for hospitality within Airbnb’s host community. These standards – including host response times, listing accuracy and cleanliness – will provide a blueprint for consistent, yet personal experiences across Airbnb’s global network of over 500,000 Airbnb listings. By educating hosts on how to anticipate and exceed guest expectations, Airbnb is poised to deliver excellent travel experiences to guests visiting over 192 countries and speaking over 32 different languages.

“Hospitality is at the very heart of what we do at Airbnb. When people think about the meaningful experiences they’ve had through Airbnb, their hosts’ warm welcome or thoughtful gestures are always at the core,” said Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb. “No one in the industry is better qualified than Chip to help our hosts redefine hospitality.”

“I became a boutique hotelier because I wanted to shake up the conventional wisdom that – in order to offer quality – hospitality had to be conventional,” said Chip Conley. “Nearly 30 years later, Airbnb is now on the forefront of a new type innovation built from the same components: meaningful host connections, great design and local experiences. But, with over 35,000 cities in our network, Airbnb’s hospitality has the potential to impact cross-cultural understanding in a measurable, positive way on a global scale. That’s unprecedented.”

Initially, the Hospitality Lab will develop an educational curriculum for Airbnb Hospitality, consisting of offline workshops, online webinars and hospitality tips. As hosts move through the program, the Hospitality Lab will share success stories and best practices with the rest of the host community. This creates a progressive model that is community-driven, intensely local and scalable.

Chip will be based at Airbnb Headquarters in San Francisco and will be focused on building a world-class team of hospitality experts as well as introducing new experiences through the Hospitality Innovation Lab.

About Airbnb:
Founded in August of 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world – online or from a mobile phone. Whether an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for a month, Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more than 35,000 cities and 192 countries. And with world-class customer service and a growing community of users, Airbnb is the easiest way for people to monetize their extra space and showcase it to an audience of millions.

Press Contact:
press@airbnb.com

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