Sounding Off: Airbnb should accept that some things are done certain ways

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered on our site that week.

Airbnb, like others that have genuinely disrupted the travel industry, should take a huge amount of credit for forging their own paths.

They have cast aside many of the preconceived ideas of "how things should be done" and capitalized from that attitude as a result.

Sure, along the way they have faced many a problem, not least in the sphere of regulatory frameworks that have been put in place over decades to ensure the sector and its customers can operate safely, efficiently and fairly.

But the concept of what they are doing - be it sharing private accommodation or hailing cars from an app - has resonated with consumers to the extent that large pockets of the industry have been forced to rethink how they operate and provide to their customers.

Where radical approaches to old problems or fresh takes on entirely new markets sometimes come unstuck is in the dull (from a PR perspective) mechanics behind what is known as process.

These are the bits that allow specific one element to work with another - the stuff that rarely captures any headlines because it is not about the end-user or the growth of a business.

At face value, Craig Stewart's dissection of the ability for hotels to use Airbnb for distribution (which he welcomes wholeheartedly, let's not forget that) illustrates that the company has some way to go if it is going to challenge the online travel agencies it singled out in early-2018.

The management of a hotel's distribution channels works infinitely easier and more efficiently when there is structure to the process, especially when all the available options that are open to them will operate in similar ways.

Hotels want some kind of uniformity within that task, allowing them quickly switch on or off a particular channel - rather than have different methods for different providers.

There is, in all likelihood, simply a lot of work being done behind the scenes at Airbnb to reach hotels on their the sector's terms, instead of some more fundamental growing pains.

But at some point, hotels - many of which are desperate for some variety in their mix of distribution - will wonder if the rhetoric about being a challenger to the OTAs is being matched with a firm grasp on the mechanics of it all.