Search Results forHotelTonight
Airbnb is on its way to becoming a hotel company
After disrupting the billion-dollar hotel industry, Airbnb is slowly straying away from its roots of listing private houses and rooms to becoming more of a hotel company. Airbnb is partnering with Newgard Development Group to open a 48-story tower in Miami called Natiivo that will feature 412 condos and 192 hotel rooms — all of which will be listed and can be rented out via Airbnb. Natiivo, which will open in 2020, claims to be the first property to be designed specifically for home-sharing. Airbnb-branded towers are rising in cities like Miami, Austin, Nashville, and Orlando. Natiivo towers are not owned by the tech company, but Airbnb will be a branded partner and provide consultation on interior design. Airbnb currently has more than seven million listings in 191 countries, is looking more and more like a hotel company. The company is looking into doing a spring cleaning of its listings. Last month, CEO Brian Chesky announced that the company would conduct a comprehensive review of every single one of its listings to verify their accuracy and safety standards. More boutique hotels listed their rooms in Airbnb after the company announced in early 2018 that it was making it make it easier for boutique hotels to list their rooms on the site and hotels saw a jump in bookings. Moreover, Airbnb bought HotelTonight, an app for getting discounts on hotel rooms through last-minute bookings earlier this year and started adding the app's hotel partners to Airbnb's platform. All of these moves are moving away from Airbnb’s original business as a platform that connects travellers to people willing to open up their homes to strangers. Airbnb is riding the wave of companies offering hybrid accommodations that combine elements of hotels and private homes like Sonder, Lyric, and Blueground. These companies aim to merge the cosiness of private homes and standards of a hotel.
The custom virtual concierge: Disruptions and solutions in voice tech
Virtual Concierge Service is a customised virtual concierge built for vacation rentals. It incorporates Echo, Dot, Google Home, or Mini, into the vacation rental, while Alexa or Google provides expert local knowledge through an interactive voice conversation. The people behind it works with Airbnb hosts and vacation rental management companies from around the world, and maintains a close relationship with Amazon, working with them weekly on Alexa for Hospitality. In this TD exclusive interview, we speak with its founder Dana Young, to talk about disruptions, solutions, and what's next for voice tech. TD: How did you come up with the idea for Virtual Concierge Service? DY: I'm a vacation rental owner with many years in the technology industry. In 2015, I was introduced to the Amazon Echo. I began learning the API and exploring ways of customising the responses from Alexa. The idea struck me — what an amazing tool this could be for a vacation rental or Airbnb! What if Alexa could be a virtual concierge for our vacation rental, the Lodge at Palmer Lake? We already had a guest binder full of information that I had painstakingly put together. Unfortunately, guests rarely looked at it. What if that same information could be delivered conversationally through Alexa? "We're now on version 3" At first, I was only thinking about our own place, the Lodge. As I got deeper into the project, I realised that there was an opportunity to make it available for any vacation rental. I developed a web portal by which hosts could enter their own content and Alexa would deliver it. With the resources of a larger team, we're now on version 3 of that technology. The Lodge at Palmer Lake What issues or problems does this solve for guests? Guests are in an unfamiliar place and so have lots of questions. At a hotel, they can call or stop by the front desk or concierge to get a quick answer. With vacation rental properties, there is no front desk. “A custom virtual concierge” The Virtual Concierge platform provides hosts the ability to define a custom virtual concierge on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Content can be individually tailored to each property. This platform is built on a flexible natural language understanding model, allowing guests to ask questions in many ways. Guests can say things like, “We’d like some restaurant recommendations”, or “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” and get immediate answers. But these are not answers like you get from Google. They are personal recommendations from the owner or manager and have specific details about the property. In addition to providing quick answers in a way that guests enjoy, the platform also provides an easy way for guests to contact the host for things like maintenance issues or late check-out requests. There are benefits to hosts as well — such as immediate notification when a guest checks out. The ability to send in the cleaning crew early is a big deal for busy teams covering many properties. Dana Young, founder of Virtual Concierge Service Why is this significant for the hospitality industry? The hospitality industry is being disrupted by new models that blur the lines between hotels and short-term rental properties. Marriott recently launched home rentals, Airbnb acquired HotelTonight, and new players like Stay Alfred and Sonder are growing quickly. Technology is the major enabler of these new models. Digital check-in and a Virtual Concierge are capabilities that will propel the growth of these new models. Traditional players that delay leveraging them will risk being marginalised. “We're just seeing the beginning” What’s next for ‘voice tech’? Interactions through voice are going to be a dominant way of using technology. We're just seeing the beginning of where Conversational AI is going. The staged release of Google Duplex is providing a window into what is just around the corner. Offloading tasks by conversing with a natural-sounding human voice that can take action on your behalf is really compelling. In the coming years, we’ll also see more natural interactions in smart home technology. This will provide another area of differentiation for hosts that leverage it to provide an incredible guest experience.
US consumers spend more in Airbnb than Hilton
Airbnb has long been a threat to hotel companies as it offers cheaper accommodation. The start-up also enables hosts to earn money by opening their homes to travellers. American consumers spent more on Airbnb last year than they did on Hilton and its subsidiary brands such as DoubleTree and Embassy Suites, according to new data from Second Measure, a company that analyses anonymised debit and credit card purchases. Hilton Worldwide is the fifth largest hotel chains in the world with 4,727 hotels in 104 countries and territories. With 14 brands across different market sectors, Forbes ranked Hilton Worldwide number 36 among the United States largest privately held companies before their IPO in December of 2013. "Airbnb is also slowly catching up with Marriott." Airbnb is also slowly catching up with Marriott. Data shows that US consumer spending on Airbnb has gone up by 30%. According to Second Measure, much of the growth comes from central US. About a third of Airbnb’s US customers are from populous coastal states like California, New York, and Florida. The immense growth of Airbnb can be attributed to the company’s expansion to business travel and experiences. The company also branches more directly to hotel space. Last year, the company expanded its bookings to include boutique hotels. Earlier this month, Airbnb acquired the last-minute hotel booking site HotelTonight, bringing it even deeper into the mainstream hotel market.
Start-up carves its own niche in the alternative accommodations scene
The hospitality landscape is now being redefined by alternative accommodation start-ups. Although many are primarily geared towards leisure travellers like OneFineStay, Airbnb and TuJia, it can be argued that only one player caters to corporate travellers to date. We recently touched base with Valéry Linÿer, CEO and founder of MagicStay, to show us how a rental platform for a niche market holds its own. TDM: How did MagicStay begin? Valéry: I founded MagicStay due to my own frustration. My career was in MICE prior to being in the travel tech industry. I have been active in event planning and management both in France and abroad, such as in Switzerland, Hong Kong and UAE. In my experience, it's often difficult to find somewhere to stay during major international events. I noticed that hotel room shortage leads to an immense price increase and extended transportation times. The only way to get cheaper hotel rates is to book farther away. With business travellers facing more budget constraints, renting an apartment close to the event area offers a larger, and sometimes more comfortable, space for a better price. So I approached a contact of mine in Cannes who has also worked in many events and conferences throughout the city. William Lecerf, who specialises in short-term rentals and related services, has become my co-founder in this start-up. TDM: Is MagicStay open to financial partnerships? Does it plan to join accelerator programmes or will it continue to generate venture capital? Valéry: We are open to partnerships that could help us to grow more quickly and scale our business internationally. We have founded the Alliance Biz Travel along with 9 other French start-ups in order to promote innovative solutions such as booking platforms for meeting rooms, rental cars or business restaurants, a communication network for business travellers, and a mobile app to manage expense reports. On our own, have already raised EUR 5 million (US$6.12 million) through angel investment. Among them are Benoît Bassi, partner and president of Bridgepoint Business in France who is also part of the Bridgepoint Group board, and Michael Benabou, co-founder of Vente-Privée.com. The Banque Publique d’Investissement (BPI), as well as other investment companies and VCs, are also helping us grow. To strengthen our presence among businesses and travel agencies, we are supported by an advisory board of shareholders who are renowned in the business tourism sector, such as Charles Petruccelli, former global travel services president of American Express. TDM: What do you think is the biggest secret to your success? Valéry: Since the beginning, we have been focused on company expectations regarding security and duty of care requirements. Our Trustay policy ensures the safety of business travellers by checking all ads, backgrounds and commitments by hosts. It also gives travellers access to safety equipment, insurance, a 24/7 hotline, personal data protection, and connection with international traveller assistance among others. Another factor is that we have chosen to be 100% B2B. We are the only alternative accommodation platform exclusively dedicated to business travel. We address a need in the hospitality and MICE industries to offer a B2B booking service featuring serviced apartments as well as aparthotels (condotels), which are affiliated with hotel chains but are operated to answer specific needs in the way apartments do. Finally, we have distribution agreements with Adagio, ResidHome, and OneFineStay, among others. This has helped us fast-track development. Our 130,000 apartments are now located in 90 countries, most of them in Europe but also in the Middle East, North and South America. TDM: What have been the key learnings in your journey? Valéry: The most difficult for us was the different notion of time between a start-up and a large company. Decision-making has taken much longer than we expected and we have learned to be very patient! TDM: Why do you think there is an increased VC interest in the potential held by data from the hospitality and accommodations industry? Valéry: Many start-ups have been launched in the hospitality industry to offer additional services on top of basic lodging, especially bespoke services to meet and anticipate client expectations. For example, MagicStay provides alternative accommodation solutions as well as customised e-concierge services. The range of services we offer to business travellers generates a lot of data and valuable customer knowledge for VCs and industry players to use. That said, the EU GDPR ensures that we who play in the hospitality industry also protect individuals and companies from using these data inappropriately. TDM: How was 2017 for MagicStay? Valéry: Last year was crucial for us, as we implemented a lot of IT developments to connect our booking platform with the travel and expense tools used by companies and TMCs. We understood that we needed to connect to the business travel ecosystem to penetrate the corporate market. Now, our booking services are available in HBT and OBT so that business travellers can book directly. As you also may know, we were able to raise a total of EUR 1.5 million (US$1.86 million) thanks to partners, angel investors and a few other companies in 2017. We signed partnership agreements with many business travel companies such as Havas Voyages (Havas Voyages Midi Libre SARL), CDS Groupe SAS, and Airplus. We also managed to sign large companies directly such as Société Générale, BFM, and Quicksilver. Finally, we won the Trophée Innovation (Innovation Award) for Business Travel from L'Echo Touristique last year. It’s great, but like other awards that we have won it also reminds us to work harder. TDM: What’s next for MagicStay? Valéry: We will continue to meet the demands of our customers. We are expecting strong growth in the French market in the next few months. We will expand our platform further to be a global player at the end of 2018. We plan to set up in regions where we are already found in, as well as in destinations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Delhi. Another thing is that we are developing a special extended stay and mobility app to facilitate reservations for one- to 12-month periods. We have noticed most HR staff in companies have no comprehensive, user-friendly tool to manage accommodation for their executives on the move. This app will factor in payment, contract, and installation. TDM: Which travel tech start-ups excite you the most these days? Valéry: What excites us are all the start-ups expanding and challenging the hospitality business, such as DayUse and Hotel Tonight, and those addressing new behaviours among business travellers. TDM: What advice would you give to start-ups playing in the travel tech space? Valéry: Think global, partner with key industry players, and stay focused on your market or niche!
Hotel booking app forms partnership with Chelsea FC
HotelTonight, the mobile app for last-minute hotel bookings, has announced a partnership with English Premier League leader Chelsea Football Club. Beginning with Chelsea’s February 4 match versus Arsenal, HotelTonight will expand its proprietary GeoRates to stadiums, providing attendees at Stamford Bridge with location-based, extra-discounted hotel deals bookable from their smart phones during and after the match. The category-exclusive partnership will also include in-arena advertising along with digital and social campaigns featuring Chelsea FC players, promotions and giveaways. In addition to HotelTonight GeoRates within Stamford Bridge (and other EPL stadiums for away games), Chelsea supporters will have the opportunity to win surprises when Chelsea scores in the last seven minutes of a match and supporters who are HT Perks (loyalty programme) members will receive exclusive access opportunities. “Chelsea FC is an iconic global brand with incredibly loyal supporters who come from far and wide, and attending matches can often spontaneously turn from a day into a night or weekend,” said HotelTonight’s chief marketing officer Ray Elias. “HotelTonight aims to enhance that experience by providing the best way to book extraordinary hotels, at amazing values, at a moment’s notice.” “Chelsea Football Club is thrilled to name HotelTonight as our first mobile app partner and is delighted by the opportunity this brings our supporters at our matches,” said Christian Purslow, managing director of Chelsea FC. “We’re pleased to connect them with the perfect solution to turn a match into a night at a great hotel.”
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