Opportunity, is that you knocking?
2018 is shaping up to be a BIG year for the travel industry. According to the 2018 Global Travel Forecast from the Global Business Travel Association, the global economy is expected to grow, and a growing economy means more business travel.
Online intermediaries offering private accommodation, like Airbnb and HomeAway, are on the verge of something big. While hotels currently represent the U.S. travel industry's fastest-growing sector, they are now competing with this new and increasingly popular product. Vacation rentals account for close to one-fifth of the entire hotel, lodging and private accommodation market, and according to NERA Economic Consulting, their bookings are increasingly growing.
While 90% of their customers are vacationers, Airbnb have now set their sights on a new frontier: business travel. They are introducing business benefits to attract an international customer base that wants to book stays for longer periods of time. These benefits include the Corporate Dashboard, a convenient travel database for corporate travel managers, as well as travel credits for business guests towards their next stay with Airbnb. Additionally, younger professionals are drawn to Airbnb's trendy image, ease of use, and self-entrepreneurial capabilities.
Airbnb plans to introduce a search tool designed for business travelers. The feature will allow professionals to filter homes and apartments that Airbnb has deemed Business Travel Ready - Bloomberg
A recent article in the Economist suggests that Airbnb is quickly becoming a significant contender for business travellers. According to a report by Bloomberg, the number of business stays booked through Airbnb tripled in 2016. While in 2015, only 250 companies travelled with Airbnb, employees from more than 250,000 companies now use Airbnb for booking home rentals that include all of the "Business Travel Ready" amenities expected in a standard hotel room. That is a very sharp increase in the span of 2 years! In addition, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world's largest organizations are signing on with Airbnb travel. This means that if you run a hotel, resort or other multi-unit property not listed on distribution channels such as Airbnb, you may be left out in the cold.
Considering that a third of travel spending in America is attributed to business travel, this opens up a world of opportunity for resort owners and management companies looking to expand their reach. The vast majority of resorts and professionally managed vacation rentals already include "Business Travel Ready" amenities, and therefore are a step ahead of the game.
Our groundbreaking multi-unit technology is your ticket to an impressive, and growing, market of business travellers. Jetstream is the first and only tech solution that gives businesses of all types the ability to get their inventory live on vacation rental markets globally. These marketplaces reach a worldwide network of business travellers who tend to stay midweek, and spend more on average.
One the greatest benefits of our all-in-one channel marketing solution is that we do all of the heavy lifting, including listing optimization, marketing, and reservation support for your future guests. While Airbnb, HomeAway, VRBO and FlipKey are structured for a single property, listing, and calendar, our innovative technology combines the calendars of your similar rental unit types behind a single property listing with each marketplace. All of your content sits on one optimized listing, and as long as you have units to sell, your listing calendar will remain live on all marketplaces.
If business travel represents a significant portion of your bottom line - or you would like it to - Jetstream is the perfect solution to expand your reach internationally.
