Airbnb has hired Chip Conley, founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, as its head of global hospitality.
The hospitality exchange network Airbnb, San Francisco, which allows users to rent rooms in private residences for lodging, said Conley’s first major initiatives in the position will be the creation of a hospitality lab in Dublin and the development of a training program to support cohesive standards for hospitality within Airbnb’s host community. Airbnb said these standards, including host response times, listing accuracy and cleanliness, will provide a blueprint for consistent guest experiences across Airbnb’s global network through workshops and webinars for hosts.
“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,” Conley said. “Nearly 30 years later, Airbnb is now on the forefront of a new type of innovation built from the same components of 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.”