How would you define convenience for a traveler checking
into a hotel for business travel? Is it knowing that there will be someone
waiting at the front desk to assist you 24/7? Is it providing standard in-room
amenities, such as daily clean sheets and towels, a coffee maker, an iron, dry
cleaning, cable TV and Wi-Fi? Or maybe convenience is better characterized by
an on-property fitness center, bar, concierge or business center. Regardless, hotels
around the world have established a standard they all must maintain in order to
attract business travelers.
Airbnb has done a phenomenal job disrupting the hotel space.
The company has added diverse and robust supply at a competitive price point.
It has created an easy-to-use booking tool to distribute its inventory to the
public. But, thus far, Airbnb has struggled to penetrate the highly
sought-after business travel market. It is no easy task to take a diverse group
of homeowners and establish a reliable level of consistency from one property
to the next, but consistency is exactly what business travelers expect.
Business travelers do not have time between meetings to track down room keys,
find business centers or search for Wi-Fi networks and passwords.
On average, business trips are short and time is vital. The
Airbnb convenience bar is lower than hotels' and inconsistent from one property
to the next. Airbnb will need to raise the convenience bar across its
properties to achieve the business travel adoption the company is striving for.
While Airbnb has struggled with business travelers, Uber has
prospered. A Certify analysis of the business receipts it processed in 2016
showed Uber to be the most expensed service while Airbnb made up less than 1
percent of expenses in the lodging category. Both Airbnb and Uber are
disruptors in their respected spaces. Both come in at lower price points than
their traditional competitors. Both have easy-to-use mobile booking tools. But,
the reason Uber has seen adoption with business travelers and Airbnb has not is
the convenience factor. While Airbnb is struggling to provide a consistent
level of convenience, Uber's combination of lower cost and higher convenience
fuels business travel adoption.
In pursuit of this convenience level, Airbnb is developing
partnerships with concierge companies and services to mimic the hotel
experience. This is a step in the right direction. Once it can establish
consistent convenience across the majority of its business properties, both travel
management companies and booking tools will be pressured to find ways to
incorporate Airbnb content into their regular booking paths.
At this point, the burden is on Airbnb, and
hotels have no intention to wait around. Instead, they're taking steps to
enhance traveler and guest convenience. If Airbnb can raise its convenience
factor at a faster pace than hotels, parity will eventually reign between hotel
offerings and Airbnb properties. At that point, Airbnb will be as strong a
contender in the business travel space as Uber is today.