Travel startups were well-represented in the Marketplace 100, which identifies the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace private companies.
The list, curated by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, ranked Airbnb as the
top overall company.
“Airbnb’s global network effect spans regions, since potential guests book lodging outside their home base and hosts expect to receive visitors from all over the world,” writes Bennett Carroccio and Andrew Chen, partners
at the firm.
“It is a single, global network, which provides a strong defensible moat that, thus far, competitors have struggled to copy.”
Fourteen travel startups were ranked on the list, including several companies earning spots in the
top 20: Portland-based vacation rental company Vacasa (#9), Tel Aviv-based ground transportation company Gett (#13), San Francisco-based car-sharing marketplace Turo (#14) and New York-based transit app Via (#18).
RV rental marketplaces Outdoorsy, based in Austin, Texas, and RVshare, which is based in Akron, Ohio, were ranked #28 and #35, respectively, overall.
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International travel startups were also honored, with Vienna-based tour marketplace TourRadar ranked at #42 and Montreal-based OTA FlightHub ranked at #62.
Santa
Monica-based online booking platform ResortPass (#71) was also named the 10th fastest-growing marketplace startup across all sectors.
Other travel companies on the list include San Francisco-based camping marketplace Hipcamp (#73), Fort Lauderdale-based
boat rental marketplace BoatSetter (#76), San Francisco-based local tours marketplace Verlocal (#88) and San Francisco-based resorts marketplace Vacatia (#91).
Methodology
Andreessen Horowitz partnered with Second Measure, a firm that analyzes purchase data, to track real-time consumer spending behavior and sales across 4,500 merchants between December 2018 and November 2019.
The rankings exclude B2B marketplaces,
transaction data outside of the United States and businesses that began processing payments in the past 12 months.
Companies were ranked by Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), a common industry metric that is calculated based on total dollars
consumers are spending against each company.
Airbnb accounted for 38% of observed GMV, more than any company, and 95% of observed GMV in travel.
“Within the travel segment, Airbnb is the runaway leader,” writes Carroccio and Chen.
“Of course, these days, Airbnb’s primary competitive set includes large, public companies focused on travel, as opposed to other startups.”
Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in Airbnb, Hipcamp and other companies on the list.