On today’s show we are taking another look at the changing landscape of hospitality. AirBnb disrupted the hotel world with the gig economy’s answer to a short term stay. Legions of property owners saw the potential for higher income and went all-in on the rental win-fall.
The hotel industry has relied on Online Travel Agents to bring them a lot of traffic. Pricing in the hotel industry tends to follow dynamic supply and demand principles. Those who are coming to town for a large convention and properties are full can expect to pay more. Coming during low season when hotels are empty and you’re likely to find a bargain. But who wants to spend a lot of time browsing through dozens of hotels in order to save a few bucks? This is where the OTA’s can add a lot of value to customers. In my personal experience, I have often booked higher quality hotels using an online travel agent at prices that are lower than you can find on the hotel’s own website. I know they say this should not be possible. I’ve just lived that experience too many times to call it a coincidence.
The online travel agents responded to the threat of short term rentals by offering to list short term rentals on their sites as well. This offers customers the option of seeing branded hotel listings in the same search results as a short term rental.
Companies like Expedia and booking.com are now carrying private listings in addition to hotels. But these online travel agents offer none of the safeguards of the Airbnb platform. Even if the same property is listed on both AirBnb and Expedia, the terms of those two contracts are vastly different.
The hotels are definitely fighting back. The biggest drawback of Airbnb is the wide variation in quality. We have probably all experienced that really bad property that frankly should have its occupancy permit revoked, let alone be removed from any short term listing site.
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