Why Airbnb’s Innovation Guru Is Building An Expedia for Festivals
Hospitality legend Chip Conley is best known for starting the Joie de Vivre hotel chain and for, more recently, being Airbnb’s head of global innovation and strategy. But his day job isn’t the only thing Conley is passionate about. He has a side gig running Fest300, a site dedicated to curating the world’s best festivals, and creating a new kind of travel guide in the process.
“We’re creating a movement here,” Conley says, “the idea that people make a pledge to go to one festival a year as a means of becoming more culturally curious.”
The economics of festivals can vary widely depending upon the audience and the experience, but music festivals—and electronic music festivals in particular—are a lucrative prospect. According to a 2014 Eventbrite/Harris poll, one in five millennials attended a music festival in the past year, twice the rate of the general population. Electronic dance festivals, which tend to attract a young social-media savvy audience, generated an estimated $6.2 billion globally in 2013.
Fest300 features over a dozen electronic music offerings, but for long-term goals, Conley said he intends for the site to introduce people to festivals they otherwise wouldn’t attend. “You can go to Oktoberfest in Munich and have a great time even if you don’t drink,” he added. “Experiential-driven travel is the fastest-growing component of travel, and we need a website that’s a world authority.”