Overcome the Cannibalising Effect of the Sharing Economy on Hotel Business 2: New Ways to Compete

The hotel businesses know that fighting the sharing economy is a losing battle. Or, at least, that was true until now.

It is not a secret anymore: placing the listings of your hotel’s rooms in front of Airbnb’s guests brings bookings. Many hotels already do so. They do away with branding; advertise by rooms, by units, by anything that brings sales. The problem is that there is no booking platform that includes all accommodation categories. Airbnb does not list all hotels, just the boutiques; Booking.com does not list those local hosts who rent spare rooms. Newcomers can easily remove this obstacle. The growing popularity of Thegoldenmoon.com is in large due to the wide range of categories permitted to list on the platform. In fact, it includes them all.

Secondly, the significance of the notion “Live Like Locals” is hugely overestimated. 90% of the guests, who book on these kinds of platforms, spend 90% of their time in the city centre, leaving the houses early in the morning and returning in the evening, without paying much attention to the local gems. Being out-and-about all day makes the anticipated peaceful environment of hotels remarkably important to the tired guests. It has to be remembered, no such “Local Experience” can out-way the comfort of a hotel room. Taken further: there is no such a non-professional host who can compete with the well managed hotel establishment.

Guest loyalty: recent research suggests that guest loyalty might not be exactly what we think. Social psychologists suggest that it has more to do with stereotyping- that is breaking the bigger chunk of information into smaller bits making it easier to use and remember. It was your client’s time, efforts, and necessity to choose between the available options that led them to favour your hotel once before, so they will likely continue in the same way in the future in order to avoid going through all that effort again.

The above point becomes valid when reinforced by the positive ‘guest experience’ during their stay. The high value of the guest’s experience is well documented. However, seeing it in this light makes the ‘experience’ the number one priority in your hotel’s competitiveness.

This is not all: the latest research suggests the upcoming “3rd Wave” [read more about the previous two here] of opportunities for hotels. The recent increase of Airbnb host’s service fees brought the price gap between hotel’s and local host’s rooms to an historic minimum.  This is highly likely to be the light at the end of the tunnel for many hotels.