Airbnb Hits 1 Million Nights Booked As European Clone Emerges

We’re quite big fans of Airbnb, the “community marketplace for space” here at TechCrunch, and we’re far from the only ones.

This morning, the young company announced that it has hit a fairly big milestone: one million nights have been booked through the service since its launch (including a couple by TechCrunch staff, I might add).

Airbnb also says it has registered month-over-month growth of 65% in January 2011 alone.

That comes off the heels of (self-reported) 800 percent growth in 2010.

More recent stats, provided by the startup:

- Guests have traveled from 182 countries to listings available in 170 countries
- 132,000 positive reviews submitted, representing 98% of all reviews
- Most expensive listing: $10,000/night
- Longest single reservation on Airbnb: 200 nights
- Most reservations by a single user: 28
- 281 million miles traveled by guests
- 160,000 iPhone app downloads
- Number of marriage proposals between guest and host: 1

For a neat infographic covering these stats and more, see below or click here.

Nathan Blecharczyk, CTO and co-founder of Airbnb, says the company will continue to focus on expanding its international operations to better accommodate its increasingly global community in 2011.

On that note, I’m reminded of a European rival based on the same idea that launched just yesterday (see The Next Web coverage for more): 9flats, which was established by Qype founder Stephan Uhrenbacher. (Update: there’s also My Friends Hotel).

Curious to see if 9flats, backed by an undisclosed amount of venture funding, will be able to steal some market share away from Airbnb in these parts.

Founded in August 2008, Airbnb has raised $7.8 million in venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners.

Crunchbase

• AIRBNB

Company: Airbnb

Website: airbnb.com

Launch Date: 2007

Funding: $120M

Founded in August 2008 and based in San Francisco, California, Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique spaces around the world – online or from a mobile phone. Whether an apartment for a night, a castle for a week, or a villa for month, Airbnb connects people to unique travel experiences, at any price point, in more that 26,000 cities and 192 countries. And with world-class customer service and a growing community...

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