Hotels May Try to Counter Airbnb’s Rise With Bets on Tech
Photo Credit: Hoteliers may try to counter the growth of Airbnb with enhanced digital services. Pictured is keyless entry with a mobile phone at an Aloft property. Starwood Hotels & Resorts
Skift Take
No one knows what Airbnb's impact is. But our contrarian take is that it's greater than what most hoteliers think -- and accelerating by the day. Yet it's manageable if hotels act strategically.
Airbnb isn't hurting hotels today in most markets. Unless it is.
STR, the market research firm, confronts that conundrum -- as does the entire hotel industry.
STR says Airbnb's precise impact won't be clear until the home-rental booking startup shares more of its transaction data with third-party researchers. The firm's researchers spoke on the issue Thursday and Friday in Nashville at the Hotel Data Conference, which is STR's annual event for trade executives.
Real or Imagined Threat?
In the absence of data, STR said it might be missing some of the impact.
Amanda Hite, STR chief executive, noted that when her firm has looked at hotel rate growth in the U.S. it has had to, in recent quarters, repeatedly revise rate growth estimates downward.
For instance, the projection it made in January for 2017 overall U.S. hotel rate growth was 2.8 percent. STR has since revised the forecast down to 2.3 percent.
"There were lots of contributing factors to that," Hite said, "But tr
