Room-renting startup Airbnb is having a blowout year. If you needed any more proof, the company announced Tuesday it is buying one of its main international rivals — a UK company called Crashpadder.
Airbnb already had a pretty strong presence in Europe, where nearly all of its phenomenal 2011 growth came from; the company recently opened offices in London and Paris. But snapping up three-year-old Crashpadder clears the decks of any competition, and the timing couldn’t be any better.
To find out why, you need only visit Crashpadder’s homepage. “Become an Olympic host!” it urges London-based users. “Rent out your spare room or whole property to visitors during the games.”
Crashpadder is only a little bit older than Airbnb, which was founded a year earlier in 2008. The cost of the sale, of course, is undisclosed.
“We’ve spent the past three years working to create a business that our community loves, and we could not have found a better home for them than Airbnb,” Stephen Rapoport, founder and CEO of Crashpadder said in a statement. “I’m excited about the new features that will be available to our users and hope they are as excited by this news as I am.”
Fancy a trip to London for the Olympics this summer? Let us know in the comments.
Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, nkbimages
Source: Mashable
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