Ad Firms Migrate From Hotels to Alternative Lodging Along With Consumers During Pandemic
Photo Credit: The River House, one of the vacation rentals available at South Fork Lodge Idaho, a resort in Swan Valley, Idaho. Owners of vacation rentals are seeking new ways to distribute their inventory via online booking channels. South Fork Lodge
Skift Take
Alternative accommodations aren't very alternative anymore. It's time for the sector to get the ad tech tools it deserves.
Consumer interest in short-term rental apartments and vacation rental homes sped up during the pandemic. For instance, about 40 percent of Booking.com's new reservations in the second quarter were for alternative accommodations. So the tech firms that have provided software tools to hotels to help with distribution and marketing are now branching out to cover the emerging segment, too.
A case in point is Koddi, an advertising technology company focused on hotels, which revealed to Skift on Thursday that it was expanding its services to reach owners of alternative accommodations, specifically operators managing more than 50 properties.
It's not new that short-term rentals appear on travel price-comparison search engines like Google, Tripadvisor, and Trivago. Skift has reported for years on the saga of Airbnb and Booking.com appearing and then disappearing from Google's results, for example.
Yet hotel owners remain more advanced at optimizing their marketing budgets than manager
