AirBnB has dropped plans to move its European headquarters to the former Facebook building in Dublin’s Silicon Dock area.
The shared accommodation site was in advanced negotiations to lease 65,000 sq ft at Hannover Reach for its European customer experience and hospitality teams, as revealed by Estates Gazette in August.
However, the deal fell out of bed last week, and AirBnb has instead chosen to let an additional 12,000 sq ft of space at their current premises in the Dublin suburbs. The company has signed a five-year lease on a rent ‘in the low 30s’. The internet success story already occupies 25,000 sq ft at the Watermarque building in Ringsend, where it has been based for a year.
High rents at the former Facebook building forced AirBnb to rethink its decision, according to a source close to the deal. Facebook was understood to have been paying in the region of €35 (£28) per sq ft for the space at Hanover Reach, but the building’s owner, Irish Pension Fund IPUT, was expected to seek considerably more. Prime Dublin office rents broke through the €40m mark in Q2 this year according to CBRE.
However, conflicts over branding may have also motivated the decision, one Dublin agent said: “Hanover Reach is almost universally referred to as ‘the Facebook building’ in Dublin, and it appears that AirBnb had mixed feelings about how this would affect their identity”
Facebook moved from Hanover Reach into a new120,000 sq ft, Frank Gehry-designed campus at 4 Grand Canal Square in June.
