Though long considered sworn enemies, alternative accommodation marketplace AirBnB and its competitors, including VRBO and Flipkey, have begun to welcome traditional hotels to their platforms.

AirBnB has made it an initiative to expand its platform beyond just individual homeowners to include hotels, and hotels should take advantage of this trend in order to increase revenues and market share.

Though AirBnB has allowed hotels to join its platform for almost two years, it’s still an untapped market. Some hotels may have been skeptical at the beginning to list on the platform; however, those who have and who took the risk have since witnessed a dramatic increase in revenue.

Indeed, AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey are now considered a new category of OTA, and adding them to the channel mix is a must for hotels looking to present their inventory to a new audience.

How can hotels harness the power of AirBnB? Is it worth it?

Relying on a partner like BnBerry, with a proven track record in helping over 500 hotels list on these alternative accommodation sites, provides an almost immediate return. Listing on AirBnB is not as simple as connecting via a channel manager to a regular OTA. Other tasks, including handling guest interactions, updating content, and managing different payments processing, require a partner.

Yet the opportunity to join these platforms is vast. Let’s have a look at why.

Wider audience and brand loyalty

First, traditional hotels would certainly want to take advantage of the size of the customer base of these platforms.

Over 2 million people stayed at an AirBnB property per night in 2019.

Further, AirBnB boasts repeat customers faithful to the site. While most travelers seeking accommodations might turn to an OTA like Expedia, a metasearch site like Kayak, or simply Google, AirBnB’s customers are loyal and return to the website specifically when seeking travel accommodations.

Rather than constantly competing for eyeballs and clicks on the traditional OTAs, hotels can take advantage of this engaged audience and its brand loyalty to fill their rooms.

Relief from OTAs

The OTAs charge high commission fees—between 15 and 30% for larger hotel chains, and even higher for smaller, independent or boutique hotels. This has generally been accepted in the industry because of the OTAs’ massive customer lists and investments in marketing.

However, AirBnB has entered the scene to disrupt the dominance of Expedia, Booking.com, and other OTAs. This added competition benefits hotels, as the OTAs will realize that they will need to lower their commission rates in order to compete for listings.

Simply put: the more hotels list on AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey, the lower the commissions will soon be for all platforms. This puts money back into hotel owners’ pockets.

Crowd out hosts

Competition is a good thing. Individual hosts might complain that their listings are competing with hotel rooms, but that just means that they will need to step up their game.

Some of them may not, because hotel amenities become a competitive advantage that individual property owners simply cannot provide.

Further, there are still areas where short-term rentals are restricted. In such areas, hotels have a ground-floor opportunity to list their rooms and increase market share.

This works in reverse, too. By listing on AirBnB, hotels can learn of in-demand amenities in particular markets (i.e., bike racks, gaming consoles) that they may not have considered previously. In this way, hotels can get closer to the competition—and ultimately, to the potential guest—and make adjustments when necessary.

The good news is that hotels do not have to do this on their own and risk investing in amenities that may not resonate with a target market. Instead, hotels can rely on BnBerry to help them understand the nuances of listing on AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey in particular markets, and be shown how to present their inventory in the best possible manner in order to garner bookings.

Younger consumers prefer hotels

Millennials and younger travelers are often considered a desirable market for hospitality companies: they are likely to travel more often.

Further, despite the reputation that millennials prefer to stay in alternative accommodations, millennials actually prefer to stay in full-service hotels by a margin of 2-to-1.

In efforts to present their properties to as wide an audience as possible, hotels can benefit from listing their inventory on AirBnB and the other alternative accommodation sites. The more sites to list on, the wider an audience is reached.

How to list on AirBnB and why hotels need BnBerry

However, listing on AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey is not as easy as it sounds. While it might seem simple for an owner of a single space to list—after all, millions of people with zero hospitality industry experience have been able to do it—hotels with hundreds of rooms in their inventory will find it tricky to list on these sites.

BnBerry helps hotels manage this process seamlessly. First off, BnBerry helps hotels connect to these platforms which is a completely different process from setting it up with the traditional OTAs. Without this very important step for connectivity, hotel owners would need to add each hotel room in their inventory manually, one by one to AirBnB’s system, in addition to those of VRBO and Flipkey. This is a headache that BnBerry takes care of.

More than connectivity, the listings on AirBnB, VRBO and Flipkey need to be presented differently than they would be on a traditional OTA. BnBerry shows hotels how to re-create their listings, including all graphics and creative, to generate stronger performance.

Further, the customer communications channels are completely different on the alternative channels, requiring much more dedication and attention than when communicating with a traditional hotel guest. BnBerry handles and unifies these communications to simplify the experience for both the guest and the hotel owner.

Finally, the payment processes of AirBnB, VRBO, and Flipkey are not the same as those of traditional OTAs. Rather than navigate an unknown, complex system of payments, BnBerry handles this on behalf of hotel owners so that they can get paid fast with zero friction.

Hotels benefit greatly by working with a distribution partner like BnBerry that has years of experience in dealing with the requirements, processes, and systems of AirBnB and the alternative booking platforms. BnBerry simplifies the process and enables hotel owners to start seeing new revenues in as little as a few weeks of implementation.

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