{"id":4902,"date":"2012-08-21T14:54:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T12:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=4902"},"modified":"2019-05-16T19:05:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T17:05:19","slug":"morningcroissant-airbnb-for-the-french-regions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/08\/morningcroissant-airbnb-for-the-french-regions\/","title":{"rendered":"MorningCroissant: Airbnb for the French countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Walking over to the office of French startup MorningCroissant<\/a>, I thought to myself, why would anybody want to do an AirBnB clone? Little did I know that I was about to learn a valuable lesson \u2013 that slapping the label \u2018clone\u2019 onto a startup can make you look very silly if you\u2019re not careful..
\nAlix Taffle and co-founder Laurent used to travel a TON for work, and got very sick of chain hotels in the process. They decided that small scale hotels, BnB\u2019s (or the French equivalent Chambres d\u2019Hotes) are much more fun! The problem was, how to find them easily. Five years ago, they decided that a web based solution was called for, and they were the ones to build it! A lofty goal, long since realized by many players on the market.
\nTo tackle the AirBnB comparison right away: Alix says, AirBnB basically took Craigslist, that previously was the leading marketplace for lots of things (in some markets, substitute for LeBonCoin if you\u2019re thinking of France), and applied it to short term rentals. Of course they cleaned up the interface (Craigslist\u2019s interface is famously bare) and they \u2018own the transaction\u2019, which Craigslist doesn\u2019t do, but it\u2019s the same principle, and indeed, before AirBnB, if you looked for a short term rental, Craigslist (again, in some markets) was the only game in town as it had the most offers on it, and as such, offered the best selection.
\nWe don\u2019t think about it very much, but the French short-term rental market is huge, worth some \u20ac4bn per year (if the socialists don\u2019t kill it). From American tourists with their apartments in the Marais to French people vacationing in the countryside, it\u2019s a huge market that\u2019s growing at a fast clip, some 15% per year. Of that market, a whopping 95% of the transactions are done on small websites, LeBonCoin, paper magazine ads, and other fragmented channels. The only \u2018large\u2019 player in town, Abritel, is thoroughly stuck in the 80\u2019s \u2013 you still have to send a cheque in the mail to the owner of the property.
\nSo considering that this huge market is mostly untapped, they started in April 2011 with MorningCroissant, and launched the first version of their site in August 2011. Their focus is on the smaller towns in France, down to the very small villages, differentiating themselves very effectively that way from AirBnB, who focus on urbanites in large French cities. This makes sense \u2013 of the 1.5 billion short-term nights paid for in France, 95% take place outside of Paris, and 2\/3rds are French people.
\nThis makes them utterly unlike AirBnB.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a clone?<\/h2>\n

At this point during the interview, I had this sinking feeling that my smug label of \u2018AirBnB clone\u2019 was completely wrong, and I felt silly. But let\u2019s look into this a bit \u2013 why do we call a clone a clone?
\nOn the surface, MorningCrossaint and AirBnB are similar \u2013 you go to the websites, and both list private residences that you can rent like a hotel, and you pay for them online using your credit card. So far, so similar. But their strategies are completely different. In fact, they barely compete at all, because they operate in such completely different markets, using such different acquisition strategies.
\nSo wait \u2013 their PRODUCTS look similar, but their STRATEGIES are completely different? I think we\u2019re onto something here. There\u2019s no cloning going on here \u2013 the products are the same because, well, it\u2019s pretty obvious, this type of website is basically eBay plus Expedia, both children of the dot com era. So the takeaway here should be that we (or at least I!) should be careful when labeling something a clone. Rocket Internet is different in this regard, as they also copy execution strategies, but apply them to different markets. Now we\u2019re copying both product (sometimes even design, I\u2019m told!), and execution, and sometimes even in the same market (think Glossybox). But there are tons of startups out there that unjustly get labeled \u2018clone\u2019, so I, for one, will be a lot more careful with that term from now on.
\nTheir other point of strength is their obsessive focus on high-quality customer service, something they learned working at GumTree (a UK version of Craiglist\/LeBonCoin). Because of the market that they are going after is people that are new to using the Internet for this sort of thing, that sounds like a great way to support their growth.
\nThen the conversation turns to insurance. After the incident in San Francisco, where someone\u2019s apartment that was rented out through AirBnB got trashed, and the owners ended up paying for the damage out of their pocket, insurance became a pretty important subject. MorningCroissant has one of the best in the business that will cover up to \u20ac1.5m.
\nFinally, let\u2019s talk about money. Their funding situation \u2013 400ke raised from a mix of angels \u2013 so they clearly have the ability to convince some of the experts about their business model. What is that business model? They take 15% of the transaction, 12% of which the guest pays, and 3% from the host. This covers the insurance also.
\nTheir future plan include expanding the development team, expanding their coverage of the French regions. Their marketing includes AdWords, and advertising in paper magazines. Competitors include Rocket Internet<\/a> powered Wimdu<\/a>, and AirBnB (sort of, as we learned).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walking over to the office of French startup MorningCroissant, I thought to myself, why would anybody want to do an AirBnB clone? Little did I know that I was about to learn a valuable lesson \u2013 that slapping the label \u2018clone\u2019 onto a startup can make you look very silly if you\u2019re not careful.. Alix<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":64790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[7781],"class_list":["post-4902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-airbnb-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}