Short-Term Rental and Vacation Rental News

These are the hospitality trends we were talking about this week.

As power shifts toward distributors, property managers will need to embrace new technology tools to better leverage these channels while working to preserve direct bookings and repeat visits.

Many companies are realizing that they cannot ignore the habits of their business travelers, but approval of the sharing economy is far from universal.

Discrimination isn’t a problem limited to peer-to-peer platforms like Airbnb, and it’s not a problem with the sharing economy itself. It’s a problem that has to do with human behavior — how we interact with one another, whether online or in real life — and one that travel brands need to offer more than lip service to improve.

Both Airbnb and New York City have missed out on a real opportunity to set precedents for the business. If Airbnb would bend a bit, and if New York leaders didn't think it was pure evil we could have seen a solution similar to what then-Mayor Bloomberg's was able to do with smart rules for Uber and e-hailing. More fighting on the horizon.

Even as CEOs of major hotel chains argue that Airbnb doesn't threaten their bottom lines, the projection that some short-term rental companies will have higher room sales than some hotels by 2020 makes their footing less secure.

These are the hospitality trends we were talking about this week.

Airbnb has now removed one of its most egregious limitations by now enabling third-parties to place business travel bookings. But travel agents and travel management companies are still left out of the picture.

Hostelworld needed to automate the online booking of hostels because there just wasn't enough money in it if employees or call center agents had to handle bookings over the phone. The company gave away free software to attract owners and then came up with a business model that was midway between Expedia's prepay model and Booking.com's pay at the hotel formula.

It's still a little too early to call this, but it's understandable why Airbnb and other alternative accommodations providers can have an advantage on peak nights: their supply is flexible, whereas the number of hotel rooms is not.