Journey 3

The success of Airbnb has mainly been because most customers perceive the platform to be more feasible than hotels. For example, during the peak seasons, Airbnb avails rooms in major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami. Also, there exist Airbnb listings even in cities with lower demand like Memphis (Bearne, 2018). Moreover, hotels have the habit of increasing their room prices during the peak seasons making Airbnb a more preferable alternative. Hoteliers, on the other hand, have recognized this problem and to address it they are acquiring new locations to help cater to increased guest bookings during the peak seasons. Also to keep up with this trend hoteliers are spending more unique properties different from the traditional hotels in order to better compete with the Airbnb listings(Bearne, 2018). Also, just like Airbnb, hotels are also emphasizing hospitality and personal experiences and this is evidenced in modern residential designs to create more intimate and personalized styles (Guttentag & Smith, 2017). Ideally, one of the biggest strengths of Airbnb is its ability to offer residential bookings that are unique to certain regions, in most cases a walking distance away from local attractions. Hoteliers are now recognizing this approach, appeals most to millennials and are looking to incorporate the same in their hotels.

Overall, therefore, Airbnb is ultimately the future disruption of the hospitality industry; in fact, Airbnb is a representation of hospitality’s future. Airbnb’s disruptive effect has been probable by taking advantage of the weaknesses innate to the traditional hoteliers. As a response, hoteliers are trying to correct their mistakes by learning from their own weaknesses and also by offering new services. Whereas it is evident that Airbnb is here to stay, hoteliers must thus learn how to incorporate emerging technologies to gain more dominance of the market share. Hence, this means taking advantage of all available resources and technologies to better compete with the Airbnb listings.

References