Accommodation
Hotels are listing their rooms on Airbnb
Across the world, about 60 million travellers have used Airbnb to find an alternative accommodation solution, rather than staying in a hotel. Now, some hotels are using Airbnb to find new customers.
It’s not a surprising move on the hotel industries behalf, who were already using third party vendors such as Expedia, Wotif.com and Hotel Tonight to fill beds. However, by contrast, websites such as these typically charge hotels a 10 per cent to 25 per cent fee per reservation. Airbnb charges hosts just 3 per cent of the fee.
"The commission is so much more attractive," says Stephan Westman, a hotel industry consultant who has listed hotel rooms on Airbnb. "Any hotel that needs to fill rooms, I don’t understand why they wouldn’t need to use it as one of their marketing arms."
It goes without saying that hotels are big business. Online travel agents account for 13 per cent of global hotel bookings, according to a 2013 white paper by travel industry research firm Phocuswright. Expedia, which owns Hotels.com, Travelocity, and Orbitz, did $5.8 billion of business last year. Priceline, owner of Booking.com and Kayak, did $8.4 billion. Both companies list Airbnb as a competitor in their SEC filings.
Airbnb has already established itself as a booking agent for bed-and-breakfasts and hostels, so much so that hosts now have options to categorize their listings as "bed and breakfasts" or "dorms."
Just as the Taxi versus Uber debate sparked heated controversy in the transport industry, we may see hotels and Airbnb hosts butt heads as everyone finds their footing in the accommodation shake-up.
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