8 years
Yeah, do the work for your marketing team :), meanwhile you don't even bother to orginize surveying and discussion in a more convenient way for the forum participants.
Airbnb Online Discussion & How To - Participants Wanted!
Hostel Reviews, Booking Engines, and Directories
Airbnb has taken the world by storm in the last few years, and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. We are looking to do a two part series on Airbnb and the hostel industry.
Part 1 will be a "fireside chat" discussion about how Airbnb is affecting the travel and hostel industry. We are looking for a variety of opinions to join us. Do you think Airbnb is direct competition to hostels, and find it's hurting your market? Is Airbnb brining you more business as an affordable OTA? Does Airbnb bring you better guests because of the mutual review system, or does it tend to attract non-hostel clientele looking for a cheap rate? What problems/solutions do you find with Airbnb?
If you are interested in participating in Part 1, please contact our moderator here.
Include your name, hostel, position, and overall opinion of Airbnb. This will help us ensure we are respresenting multiple viewpoints.
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Part 2 will be a "how-to" discussion on the best ways to use Airbnb for your hostel. Do you screen guests or allow instant booking? What about pre-approval? How do you deal with booking multiple guests for a single date? What other issues do you find and how have you worked around them? What are the best parts about using Airbnb for your hostel?
If you are interested in participating in Part 2 and feel comfortable explaining how you use Airbnb for your hostel, please contact our moderator here.
Include your name, hostel, position, and how long you've been using Airbnb.
- Comments
8 years
Hi Natalia,
Thanks for your response, thought I'm a bit confused on what your frustration is, or what you are asking for. When you say "not bothering to organize a survey or discussion that is convenient", do you mean you don't find the online discussion style easy or useful?
Perhaps you are not familiar, but Hostel Management regularly hosts online panel discussions with owners and managers from around the world. In this way the rest of the community can listen in, for free, and learn about tips, tricks, challenges, and solutions on a variety of topics.
This post was intended to find participants for two such chats on the topic of Airbnb. Once finding the participants, we pick a date and time that works for everyone involved, and announce it to the community. Anyone is then welcome to stream it live, or if they cannot listen at that time, they can come back at any point and watch the recorded video.
I'm not sure in which way that is inconvenient for participants on our forum. Can you explain what you meant? If you prefer the written format of the forum, you are of course welcome to start a discussion on there about this topic, and will receive notifications when others respond.
You are welcome to respond to me personally. Please let us know what other features you are interested in, and what would make the site easiest for you to use. You can messae me through this site or email me here.
Cheers, Courtney
8 years
You are not a booking channel for hostels. Your functionality doesn't allow us to work comfortably with you. You don't let hostel PMSs / channel managers integrate with you. Probably you are great booking system for indivuals or agencies, who sells rooms/apartments. But at the moment you have nothing to offer to hostels. There is no topic to discuss. You'd better put your efforts in technical support than in marketing.
8 years
Hi again. I think I understand your confusion better.
To be clear: I am not in any way affiliated with Airbnb. I am the editor for Hostel Management, and one of our regular features is online panel discussions. These talks have owners and managers around the world discuss various topics that affect them. We have done discussions on everything from social media to how to find great staff. One of our latest topics we chose was Airbnb.
The first part will discuss how Airbnb is affecting the hostel industry. Some people have opinions about if it's hurting as competition, while others get great business from them. There are many opinions, and it's worth a chat, because many hostels do use them or consider it, and it's also good to know how the hostel industry is being affected by different players.
The second part will be more of a 'how to'. As you said, they are not always comfortable to work with. But the reality is that many hostels DO use Airbnb, and sucessfully. For instance, up to a third of the bookings at the hostel I manage in San Francisco come from Airbnb, and I get emails all the time from other hostels asking for help on how to best manage listings. So we want to help those who do use the site improve their experience, as well as show others how they can.
I hope this helps clear up any misunderstanding you had. Airbnb did not ask for this; other hostels did.
8 years
I apologize if my answers were rough, I thought you were a representative of Airbnb, and, as you can guess, we don't have with them a positive experience. The independent duscussion is always good idea.
Some people have opinions about if it's hurting as competition, while others get great business from them.
I think it depends on country/location, for example we are located in Barcelona, the city with the strictest local laws in Spain. To rent your property for a stay less than 3 months here you must have a licence for tourist accommodation. The fine for illegal renting without licence is from 30.000 to 90.000 euros. For apartments / private houses till 2016 it was very difficult to get the licence, so many properties don't have it. And now nobody can get the licence, even if they want, till 2019 the city temporally stopped to issue the licences for tourist accommodation. AirBnb is one the main sources for local police to find illegally rented properties. So, logically, the apartment/houses owners without the licence (not all but the most of them) are avoid to publish their properties at AirBnB, and thus they are not hurting the market by offering dumping prices. So our main competitors are other hostels and 1-2 star inns. And as they are not interested in AirBnB (because there is no integration with hotel/hostel managment softwares), so we either have to endure the inconvenience working with AirBnb and managing listing with them.
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