In May this year I wrote about the meteoric rise of Airbnb – the community-driven hospitality company and part of the so-called ‘sharing economy’ – and how during the past year the number of guestrooms available through Airbnb had grown from 300,000 to around one million worldwide.

The article was about how Airbnb was targeting the business travel sector by launching a business portal – where only relevant properties will be shown to business users – along with a new partnership with Concur’s TripLink.

The article finished with a ‘watch this space warning’ for travel managers.

What a difference a summer can make. The start-up shaking up the hospitality industry says it signed up 500 companies to its ‘Airbnb for Business’ programme within 24 hours of launching on July 20th, and now more than 1,000 firms from at least 35 countries have integrated the program into their corporate travel plans.

Personally I would be interested to understand the type of organisations booking this accommodation and the type of business traveller staying with them.

What’s interesting is the trend of business travellers incorporating leisure time on their trips.

The average business travel trip with Airbnb is 6.8 days, which shows how travellers are looking for a mix of business and leisure, often adding a weekend to explore a new destination.

Traditional hotel chains see Airbnb as a rival and accuse it of helping people avoid taxes and of hosting illegal hotels on its website.

Travel managers and procurement will be forced to consider suppliers such as Airbnb and Uber as their reputations grow and they become mainstream suppliers, and the question still remains, “is there a place for Airbnb in a managed travel programme”?