AirBNB and other vacation rental services have been a nightmare for the hotel industry. In many cases, the rooms are cheaper, and, in some cases, guests can rent an entire house for roughly the same cost of a hotel room. It may sound like the deck is stacked, but hotel managers can use very specific aspects of the hotel to show travelers the real bargain and the far better experience is booking a room at your hotel.
Stressing Loyalty Programs
One of the largest benefits of staying at a hotel is racking up loyalty points. These points, as you all know, are used for free nights or addons during a stay, but as an individual property, you can put programs in place to make your loyalty programs even more attractive to travelers, especially if rooms sales have taken a hit recently due to sites like AirBNB.
In this aspect, every market is going to be different. For instance, business travelers in New York are not going to find the same benefits as attractive as a vacation traveler in Florida. Management needs to look at the experience from the perspective of the traveler to tweak your loyalty program to make it more attractive to each demographic of traveler that stays at your hotel.
Currently, there is no benefit to showing loyalty to AirBNB or even a particular property. This is something that needs to be stressed to the current traveler.
Highly Specialty Amenities of Property
As someone who has stayed at AirBNB properties, I can tell you one of the more frustrating aspects is the lack of consistency from property to property. This is something the hotel industry needs to tout to lure lost travelers back to the hotel. For instance, not all properties provide bath products or linens. You also have to give the home a quick cleaning before you leave or you get hit with a higher cleaning fee (even though properties already charge a significant cleaning fee). Even something as simple as cable TV is not always available, depending on the property.
Added Benefits of a Hotel Stay
In addition to the factors above, there are a few basic aspects of staying at a hotel that are far more beneficial and/or convenient than using an AirBNB. For instance, I once stayed at a property where I had to meet the host away from the property and have him let me into the property out of fear of his neighbors finding out he was using the apartment as an AirBNB. As far as I was concerned, this was a HUGE inconvenience, especially since I was not informed of this until the day of my check-in. In most cases, early check-ins and late check-outs are not even an option.
Something else to consider is the simple availability of the hotel staff to help when challenges or problems arise. Something as basic as running out of coffee in the room is handled by picking up the phone at a hotel and will not cost the guest a cent. At an AirBNB, you would need to run out to the local store, and this is assuming there is even a coffee pot available at the AirBNB location.
Some hotels offer free breakfasts and/or happy hours for guests. The only way you get breakfast at an AirBNB is if you go shopping and cook it yourself. In most cases, there is not even a bottle of water in the fridge let alone a free happy hour!
Flood Social Media
Now that you know the specific comparisons to make, it is up to you to create a social media campaign to highlight these benefits. Flood your social media pages with comparison photos and videos to highlight these differences. Get customer testimonials on video where a guest has stayed at an AirBNB property and has noted how much better they prefer staying at your property instead. The hospitality industry is under attack from the property rental industry and the only way to win the war is to point out to the guest the reason this industry is called the “hospitality” industry.
Is your hotel losing sales due to the onslaught of available listings in the area of AirBNB properties or other home rental services? If your marketing team has let you down, it is time to let JDI find the managers that will get your property back in the game. Joseph David International is regularly ranked among the top hotel recruiters because we don’t just find managers, we find the ideal manager for your property’s specific needs. For more information about our hospitality recruiting services, please click here.