Airbnb Names Ex-Booking.com Hotel Boss and Viator President as Chief Business Officer

Skift Take If Airbnb needs people connections and know-how to scale its boutique hotels business, it found someone with deep experience in Pepijn Rijvers. He also has marketing and tours and activities experience at Booking.com and Viator, respectively. Airbnb on Tuesday named Pepijn Rijvers, who ran Booking.com's hotels and short-term rental business, as its new chief business officer. He succeeds Dave Stephenson. The move comes as Airbnb treats expanding its hotels business as a strategic priority. In August, Airbnb said it had added thousands of boutique hotels across 20 cities, including New York, Paris, London, Madrid, Rome, and Singapore. Rijvers spent more than a dozen years at Booking.com — arguably Airbnb's main rival — from 2008 to 2021. In addition to his roles in accommodations, he served as chief marketing officer for around five years and launched the company's China business, a market where