Hospitality startups like Airbnb and Vrbo are often seen as being at odds with more established entities in the industry, especially the hotels and motels that have existed for far longer. There’s a good reason for that: the short-term rental disruptors and the hotel industry have, in fact, been on opposite sides of efforts to lobby governments about industry regulation. But not all startups in this vein have the same business model, and two companies who are nominally on opposite sides of this divide recently announced a wide-ranging agreement.
Those companies are Marriott and Sonder, the latter a company whose website boasts that it is “on a mission to redefine hospitality by bringing exceptional stays everywhere.” What that means in practice is that Sonder operates a number of dedicated spaces around the world, with an eye towards memorable design and convenient locations.
In a review of Sonder last year at Apartment Therapy, Elizabeth Laseter noted that Sonder’s…