For event organizers, the room block is a critical piece of any event. It offers attendees a discount on rooms right near or in the conference hotel. For some organizers, and some event types, hotels are either not enough or not the right fit for attendees. Even with the popularity of the sharing economy, it's still not easy for event organizers to pull this type of inventory into a booking flow. To address this, today Airbnb announced a new tool for event organizers to offer its inventory to event attendees.
The tool works in a familiar way, allowing event organizers to make an interactive map of available listings near the event site. This means that the event organizer can curate, to some degree, the types of listings that show up for their event attendees. The company We'll also create a personalized landing page, which will certainly be handy for events that might not traditionally have much accommodation information on the event site.
In announcing the new tool, the company points to its origin story during the 2008 Democratic National Convention:
In 2008, three travelers became the first-ever Airbnb guests when they needed a place to stay for a conference in San Francisco. Ten years later, we’ve come full circle by introducing a new tool for event organizers to help attendees find the best accommodations.
We know cities often don’t have capacity to handle sudden or expected surges (resulting from events), so today we’re launching our new Airbnb for Events tool to offer event organizers and conference planners the ability to create an interactive map of Airbnb listings that are near their venues, and embed the map directly on their event website in just minutes.To get started, event organizers and conference planners simply tell us about their event. From there, they can create an interactive map of Airbnb listings for their event website to help their attendees find nearby homes. We’ll also automatically create a personalized landing page for their event on Airbnb.com that event organizers can share with attendees and use to market their event.
The company has also created partnerships so that accommodation listings will be shown on sites like Insider, Inspirock, Picatic, RSVPify, Taquilla, and WeddingWire. The new tool can be accessed at the Airbnb for Events website.