Travel

Airbnb is now bigger in Europe than US: Exec

Economic impact of Airbnb services
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Economic impact of Airbnb services

Europe accounts for more than half of Airbnb's business, the company's co-founder and CTO, Nathan Blecharczyk, said recently.

"We are far bigger in Europe now than we are in the U.S.," he told CNBC in an interview Monday. "This concept has been growing faster there, actually over half of our business is now based in Europe."

Airbnb is a website that connects travelers to hosts who want to rent out rooms or entire homes. The rates are generally much cheaper than most local hotels. The San Francisco-based company was founded in 2008 and now has listings in 190 countries around the world.

Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder and CTO of Airbnb.
David A. Grogan | CNBC

Blecharczyk attributes Europe's roughly 600,000 Airbnb listings to the slow economic recovery.

"People have been looking for ways to supplement their income and they've been opening up their houses in order to do that," he said. "Europe is geographically a small area and it makes it really easy to travel and there is a lot of culture."

Blecharczyk said that the company is seeing more Americans travel around the world because of a stronger dollar. "Europeans travel a little less outside of Europe, so it all kind of balances out at the end of the day." he said.

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