Skift Take
Airbnb needs to offer more info to visitors about hosts, and making them more searchable would be an improvement. The fear, however, is that such info would make it much easier for guests to book straight with hosts and bypass Airbnb.
Dennis Schaal
Online Travel This Week
Top executives at Airbnb, Google Travel, and Agoda individually supplied tips in the last couple of days about upcoming functions on their companies’ desire lists.
They revolved around search and “fintech.”
Airbnb Could Add More Host Information
Airbnb Chairman and CEO Brian Chesky said at Skift Global Online forum last week that allowing guests to find out extra information about the host, whether that individual is a musician or has other appealing qualities, might be of great interest.
“There’s a group of people that don’t care a lot who the host is, and where the host is maybe a property management business, and who they are it doesn’t matter as much,” Chesky said. “However there’s most likely a much larger group of individuals that wish to remain in a real home. They care who the person is.”
Airbnb recently broadened the classifications guests can use to look for residential or commercial properties, consisting of everything from lakefront houses to A-frames and residences in surfing areas so adding a different way to discover host details might be appealing.
The company’s home listings currently provide profiles of hosts, consisting of how many reviews their home has, when they joined Airbnb, whether they are a superhost, and brief descriptions. But Airbnb has actually been slammed for not determining whether the seemingly individual host may in fact work for a business residential or commercial property supervisor, for example.
“What if you could stay with a musician, and you could see the structured data about who that person is?” Chesky said. “So, I believe matching individuals based on their individual attributes, not just the properties, is essential.”
One factor weighing versus more Airbnb transparency about hosts is that the business fears more details about hosts might lead to more visitors booking directly with hosts, and bypassing Airbnb.
Google Could Revive a Flight Price Assurance
What one might loosely call “fintech” is ending up being hotter by the moment in travel, and beyond. It ranges from Booking.com’s new payment systems and Grab’s financing and wealth management services to Hopper’s airline tickets and hotel price freeze functions.
Richard Holden, Google Travel’s vice president of item management, told the audience at Skift Global Forum September 20 that the business is mulling restoring at flight rate guarantee that it evaluated in 2019, but abandoned during the pandemic.
“That is something that we’re looking at trying to restore in the next year approximately, which I think is a fascinating opportunity,” Holden said. “The customers actually loved when we explore it before. And we work a lot on what I would call insights, cost insights both on the hotel side and the flight side. But I wouldn’t state there’s anything that I would consider fintech-specific that we’re revealing at this point.”
Holden appears to be making a distinction in between fintech services related to banking or investment, and insurance-like functions in travel such as price warranties.
This is how Holden explained an early version of the function in 2019:
“When we predict the cost will not decrease for select travel plans scheduled in between August 13 and September 2, we’ll guarantee the cost won’t drop, and we’ll refund you the difference if it does. We’ll keep an eye on the price for you and if the cost drops any time before departure, we’ll send you an email letting you know when your flight takes off– so there’s no deal with your end. This function is offered for choose schedules coming from the U.S. with domestic or global destinations.”
Agoda to Debut a Rate Freeze and Cancellation Insurance Coverage
Agoda CEO Omri Morgenshtern told TTG Asia that the Booking Holdings brand plans in 2023 to introduce cost freeze and cancellation insurance features.
This might be originating from a collaboration with Hopper, although none has actually been announced. Agoda sister business Kayak currently has a Hopper partnership.
In Brief
Boosted Fee Disclosure Could Be Coming for Airline Companies and Online Travel
The U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing that airline companies, online travel agencies, offline travel agencies and metasearch engines offer consumers with more total air travel prices information, consisting of information about secondary services and cancellation fees, in preliminary search engine result. Don’t depend on this occurring soon due to the fact that of the required tech modifications alone would be significant. Skift
Expedia CEO Claims Online Travel Has Great Deals Of Growing Room
Online travel still controls only a fairly little portion of the international travel market so there is a lot of space for future growth. That was Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern’s take at Skift Global Forum– and, not enduring a hard competitive environment– he’s right. Skift
Oyo Eyes 2023 IPO However Softbank Trimmed Its Evaluation
Oyo, the India-based budget hotel and short-term leasing operator and supplier, hopes to go public in 2023, but its Softbank client apparently downsized Oyo’s valuation. When it comes to many others, it’s been an extremely tough roadway for Oyo considering that 2019. Skift and Skift