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If you're like me, you probably don't use Airbnb as much as you used to. It might be because you need to be able to check in at random times like 1 AM, or it might be because you're tired of random people cancelling on you the day before you're scheduled to travel.
Regardless of reason, Airbnb senses that people are drifting back toward preferring hotels: it's now trying to compete on their home turf. A new program, Airbnb Plus, is marketed as a better way to guarantee basic levels of service – like toilet paper – by manually visiting and reviewing properties.
In other words, it's basically how the entire Airbnb platform should work, but is leveraged as a way to go a little more up-market. These Plus properties are required to be up to a particular standard, offer services like instant property access and other 'perks' that come with traditional hotel territory — as well as those that don't, like a fully-equipped kitchen for cooking while away.
How does Airbnb define that? Well, it sends someone to take photos, and inspect the property, before they can be accepted. Over time, they will need to keep up to standard (and maintain more than 4.8 stars) — essentially a way to brute-force the host taking responsibility.
Alongside this high-end focus, the company is actually welcoming boutique hotels to the platform as well, with a new category for them. These are interesting changes as people have become accustomed to expecting less from Airbnb properties over time; now it can capture higher end travelers who don't have time to mess around trying to meet the host in a parking lot.
Airbnb's biggest challenge in the short term is making up this weird middle ground: people choose the service for the 'home' experience overseas, but as the platform has become inundated with professional money makers this has become much harder to find. It doesn't appear the program addresses this, and it's a pervasive problem in Europe — you know the moment the host shows up holding a clearfile.
Still, the progress is interesting: hotels are competing by cutting prices dramatically, but not really innovating all that much (except this one in Amsterdam, perhaps) so there's plenty of space for Airbnb here. Eventually, like all 'sharing' economy businesses, it'll probably come full circle and just open a hotel anyway.
🌎 Read the full story at NYT
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