SAN FRANCISCO
The San Francisco Travel Association and Airbnb just announced a new destination promotion partnership, a first of its kind for a destination marketing organization.
This partnership leverages the sharing economy as a new way of meeting the needs of San Francisco visitors and driving the economic impact of tourism to neighborhoods throughout the city, highlighting local Airbnb hosts who welcome and share their love of San Francisco with visitors every day.
"The growth of the sharing economy has generated new visitor demands for creative lodging and transportation options around the world," said Joe D'Alessandro, president and CEO of San Francisco Travel. "San Francisco is excited to be the first destination to formalize a relationship in this exciting new space.
“The development of platforms that enable individuals to share their resources was born in San Francisco, the ‘innovation capital of the world,' as Mayor Ed Lee has noted time and time again,” D’Alessandro added. “This partnership is a step towards ensuring that customer needs and industry standards within the ‘traditional’ and ‘sharing’ economies are more closely aligned."
Together, the San Francisco Travel Association and Airbnb will connect tourism to neighborhoods by encouraging visitors to live like a local. There will be neighborhood tourism tool kits created for local merchants, and unique content about local neighborhoods, businesses and experiences throughout the city.
Additionally, Airbnb will be connected to meeting and event planners to achieve peak attendance during city-wide conventions and big events while meeting the diverse lodging preferences of a wide range of delegates coming to the city.
“Airbnb sees the city of San Francisco through both the eyes of the people who live here and the people who visit here,” said Chip Conley, Airbnb’s head of global hospitality and strategy. “With an estimated 72 percent of the approximately 6,000 San Francisco hosts located outside the main hotel districts, Airbnb helps connect visitors to more of the city’s diverse neighborhoods and businesses in meaningful ways.
"By partnering with San Francisco Travel, we’ll also ensure there will be a positive economic impact on the city’s neighborhoods, businesses and residents.”
The San Francisco Travel Association is a private, not-for-profit organization that markets the city as a leisure, convention and business travel destination. With more than 1,500 partner businesses, San Francisco Travel is one of the largest membership-based tourism promotion agencies in the country.
Founded in August of 2008 and based in San Francisco, Airbnb is a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book accommodations around the world – online or from a mobile phone.
