Hotels are catching on that they can learn from the rise of the home-sharing market.
Though traditional hotel operators have been beleaguered by the march of brands such as Airbnb, they have taken steps to embrace the trend in recent years.
A good example is the Marriott International-Hostmaker partnership announced in April as a trial program bringing home rental properties under the Marriott Tribute brand.
The trial is proving successful and may be extended to Europe, according to Hostmaker chief operating officer James Lemon, who joined the company in April.
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Lemon, who was speaking at the Mews Systems "Back to the Hospitality Future" event in London last week, gave an update on the Marriott partnership and shared views on his learnings from the home-sharing segment.
“Marriott was trying to look differently at the [home-sharing] space. Hotels know they’re losing customers on particular stay types and lengths. Ultimately, Marriott was looking for a partner, and I think the reason they picked us is because we are hoteliers at heart," he says.
"They were looking for someone who could property curate a home, someone who would look after a home month in, month out, and also someone who could take care of the guest experience. Ultimately, the biggest thing they wanted to show their hoteliers is that it is not really a threat. The average stay at a hotel is a couple of nights, ours is five to six nights.”
He adds that 80% of guests to homes provided under the partnership are Marriott or Starwood loyalty card holders.
There’s a war going on between Expedia, Booking.com and Airbnb in our sector, so a for four-year-old startup to spend precious resources entering that battle would be absolutely crazy.
James Lemon - Hostmaker
Questioned on what he has learned since joining Hostmaker earlier this year, Lemon says his two big issues are for hoteliers to stop trying to control everything and to stop the “obsession with direct booking.”
“There is real denial in the hotel industry that people want to use their Netflix account or want to order in Deliveroo. What home-sharing has forced us to do is really stick to what we’re good at - bringing in the hotel basics.”
He adds that consumers don’t want to be told what to do and what time to do it.
On direct booking, Lemon says he’s happy to not try to build up a leisure brand with giants such as Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia already in the market.
“There’s a war going on between Expedia, Booking.com and Airbnb in our sector, so a for four-year-old startup to spend precious resources entering that battle would be absolutely crazy.
“One of the things we’ve recently focused on is picking the right channel for the right thing. We sell on more than 50 channels - some are classic hotel websites, some are corporate lets, and we’re on RightMove and Zoopla. Why should I build a website that does all of those things when there’s 50 channels out there? As a small hotel chain or small home-sharing company you’re never going to win that battle.”
He says the company would rather devote its resources to channel integration, getting pricing right and the guest experience.
Opposing view
Dissent came unsurprisingly from Triptease, which specializes in helping hotels drive direct bookings.
Stuart Ervine, principal engineer for the company, believes it’s a mistake to hand over the customer data to the online travel giants.
“It’s really valuable from a hotel perspective. If we don’t counteract booking through OTAs and allowing them to control the guest experience, then the hotel will lose out. Is it not better to try and push people towards the hotels and collect data yourselves and use it for your own benefit?”
Ervine adds that in the long term it will be detrimental to the industry for OTAs to have all the data, and without it, hotels cannot personalize.
This is a debate that rumbles on, but Lemon feels that Hostmaker made a specific choice and that small businesses need “to focus on what they’re about.”
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