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Airbnb open letter continues courtship of small hoteliers

Airbnb is continuing its push to bring more boutique hoteliers and bed and breakfast owners into its fold. In an open letter on Tuesday entitled “Airbnb is for everyone,” it invited these type of operators – not big brand purveyors – to list their inventory on the Airbnb website with commission rates lower than the traditional OTAs. It cited research and data to back their message of ‘come join us.’

In the letter, Airbnb reinforced that it offers lower fees compared to OTAs at 3% to 5% commissions, while not require long-term contracts and not being overshadowed by big branded hotels. It also suggested ti plans to improve its toolkit to manage inventory on the site, which is where the big OTAs currently have a more sophisticated offering.

Airbnb cited data suggesting that while overall international travel to the U.S. is down, the number of guests from other countries using Airbnb to visit the United States materially accelerated in 2017, up 30% year-over-year.

Airbnb also linked to commissioned research that revealed opinions of 49 proprietors of small boutique hotels, conducted in February 2018, of which 49% said they used Airbnb in the last year to advertise their properties. All respondents indicated that they own, manage or work at a hotel, motel, bed and breakfast, boutique hotel or inn. All respondents also indicate that they are familiar with the reservation system or channel management for the property that they manage.

Results indicate that proprietors of these boutique hotels largely believe that the fees charged by third party booking sites are too high. In addition, very few said they are satisfied with the level of customer service provided by these vendors.

Nonetheless, to date Airbnb has only about 24,000 hotels on its platform, which is less than 1% of its more than 4.5 million global listings. But it is starting to turn up the volume to grow that small number and give OTAs a run for their money.

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