Kindred CEO: Affordability a Concern for Travelers

Watch Kindred CEO: Affordability a Concern for Travelers - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Let's start with home swapping. What exactly is it and how have you turned it into a business?

00:06Yeah, great to be here. So home swapping is a members only way of enabling community driven

00:14travel. So Kindred was founded in 2021. We launched in 2022. And what we do is we help

00:20verified members match with others anywhere else in the world to stay in each other's real

00:26primary residences instead of having to break the bank on hotels or short term rentals. So members

00:32apply to join and can either do a reciprocal simultaneous home swap. So I stay in your house

00:39while you stay in mine at the same time. Or they can host others in the network and earn nights that

00:45they can use to stay at a different members home at a later time anywhere else in the world.

00:49So who do you compete with? I compared you to Airbnb in the intro, but is that an accurate

00:56comparison?

00:58So often when consumers are planning travel, historically, they've had two choices. Either

01:03they could stay at a vacation rental or an Airbnb, or they could stay in a hotel. And Kindred is really

01:09popularizing this new third option. It's really quickly become the fastest growing new category

01:16in travel because of the affordability and the experience that's really grounded in human

01:22connection. And as our 2026 global travel forecast found, no surprise, affordability is the far and

01:30away top concern of consumers right now as they're planning their holiday travel. So home swapping is a

01:37model that really meets this moment by offering a way to travel that is radically more affordable

01:43than prior options. Well, talk to us about how you scale and you grow. You know, it sounds like,

01:51you know, you need to attract people to come to your platform with their homes. How do you get the word

01:57out here? Largely through referrals. This is a high trust experience. It's a really vulnerable thing to

02:06let somebody stay in your home. And as you mentioned, over 90% of Kindred members are joining with their

02:12real primary home. And the vast majority have never done anything like this before. So what we're

02:18seeing is a real shift in consumer behavior, because there's such a huge appetite for people to find a

02:26new way to travel that can be much more affordable, and also more grounded and authentic human connection.

02:33And before we let you go, I am curious, you know, you think about the experience with Airbnb,

02:38one of the things that people tend to complain about are these surprise fees when it comes to

02:43cleaning or, you know, other little details that maybe were lost in the initial excitement about

02:49booking. And I wonder how you handle that and how you handle the homeowners who are offering up their

02:54properties. Yeah, so on Kindred, to book a stay, you just pay Kindred of small service fee. On average,

03:03it's between 15 and $30 per night, and you pay for the cost of cleaning. But members don't actually

03:11pay one another at all. You don't earn revenue by hosting on Kindred. It's a give to get ecosystem,

03:17where you're essentially just exchanging nights in one another's homes. And so by removing the nightly

03:24rate, this makes travel around 10 ish percent of the cost of what it would, what you would bring up to

03:32stay at a comparable home in a vacation rental.