New Office Of Airbnb Company Case Studies Example

Airbnb is an online platform for short-term rentals of private housing worldwide. Airbnb users have an opportunity to let travelers rent their housing, in whole or in part. The company’s website provides a platform for establishing contact between the host and the guest, and it is responsible for processing transactions. Airbnb offers more than five hundred thousand houses, apartments and rooms in 192 countries and 33,000 cities. Since the moment of its establishment in August 2008 and until June 2012 there were more than ten million nights booked through Airbnb.
The founders of the company act as the key management, and namely: Brian Chesky is the Chief Executive Officer of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia is the Chief Product Officer and Nathan Blecharczyk is the Chief Technical Officer of the company.
Apart from its headquarters in San Francisco, the company now has 11 regional offices: in Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin, London, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Sydney. In 2014 the company announced that it plans to open a new headquarters in Portland, Oregon. The main headquarters will remain in San Francisco and the headquarters in Portland will serve as operational one.
If Airbnb decides to open new offices overseas, it will need to hire some new employees. Although the main data and software engineering department should probably be situated in the headquarters, they will still need 5-6 data engineers and software engineers on site. Apart from that each office will require its own legal department with legal advisors who know the current local legislation and will be able to provide legal support to the company’s activities. 2-3 legal advisors in each office should be enough. Besides, it will be necessary to have an economics and finance department which will consist of several accountants and 1-2 specialists in the field of economy and/or finance. Each office of the company will also need technical support team which will include 7-8 employees who will ensure smooth and trouble proof work of the office. Several quality assurance managers will be needed as well. There should also be at least 3-4 employees who will work on data protection and security. Airbnb receives a lot of data (including personal information and credit card information) from its customers, and it is extremely important that the company can protect this data from hacker attacks. The company may also want to have at least one human resources manager in each office in order to facilitate the process of recruitment of new employees as well as managing the relations with the existing employees. Thus, the company will need to recruit approximately 35-40 employees in each new office it plans to open.
In each new office of Airbnb it will be necessary to have the following spaces: office rooms for the employees, conference rooms, break rooms, space for lunch/dinner, collaboration spaces, restrooms, and recreation spaces. The office rooms for the employees will take the major part of the office space, but all other spaces are also important and should be given appropriate attention while planning and arranging the area of the new office.
Let us analyze the types and characteristics of the spaces required for the new offices of the company. Due to the fact that the vast majority of the company’s services are provided online, and the customers (landlords, travelers) are not expected to come to the offices personally, the exhibition areas or spaces for meetings with the customers will not be required. It will be necessary to have several conference rooms, a big one (where all the employees can fit) and 3-4 smaller ones (for 10-15 people). These conference rooms shall serve for holding meetings and get-togethers where the current state of affairs and the strategies for future development will be discussed, for consultations about certain issues, for negotiations with potential investors and partners, for employee trainings. They have to be well-equipped and should have a flipchart, wireless Internet access, multimedia projector, projection screen, air conditioning, i.e. there should be everything necessary for successful negotiations and successful trainings, meetings, and interesting and useful seminars. The conference rooms could look as follows:
The offices should be open while they promote and facilitate communication between the workers which is very important for creation of a friendly and successful team. The employees should have assigned places, but at the same time they should be allowed to switch places as they need, as well as to change temporarily their place to a more comfortable one if they for example need a quiet place to concentrate on a certain task, or if they what to turn on the music which inspires them but it distracts other workers in the office. It will be better to have seated working places with comfortable furniture. Standing working places are more dynamic, but I imagine that the Airbnb employees will need to spend much time sitting in front of the notebook, and for that reason it is preferable to provide them with comfortable working places. The following pictures could be viewed as an example of the offices for Airbnb:
The common spaces, such as rooms for breaks, spaces for dinner, collaboration spaces, restrooms etc. should be simple, yet comfortable and creative. Rooms for breaks should provide a possibility to relax, both physically and mentally, to change the body position, to switch the focus of attention, to watch/to read something interesting, maybe even to do some physical exercises etc. The space for dinner should be simple and elegant; there should be small tables which can be easily moved and rearranged. There should be a café where the employees can have a cup of coffee and discuss current matters. Besides, there should be a snack bar where an employee can get some stuff to eat. The collaboration rooms should have bright and cozy furniture and promote simple communication between the employees, creative ideas, interesting solutions and comfortable atmosphere. The pictures below provide illustrations of possible solutions for Airbnb: