Hi! It's been a while, hasn't it?

Hi!  It's been a while, hasn't it?  You can see my new posts on Medium.  Of course, all my older posts are still on Blogger for your enjoyment.  Thanks for stopping by!

Venturing deeper into the "dark side" of hospitality, they said.

The hotel industry has been dazed, confused, and overall fragmented about the impact of Airbnb on their business.  On one hand, you have hotels citing they are disadvantaged and their unions accusing Airbnb of creating a reduction in hotel jobs.  On the other, you have a few top tier hotel chains that claim Airbnb is not a threat, including a VP that hasn't even heard of Airbnb's existence.
Seriously?  I'm sure that VP has been educated in recent weeks.

These days it seems the hotel resistance is beginning to take on a new cohesive shape.  Tnooz reports of the American Hotel & Lodging Association mobilizing its 52,000 members to battle against the evil doings of short term rental companies and websites like Airbnb.  A brief snippet of their objective:

Together with our partner states, identifying target cities and localities where we can engage in select tax, safety, and health fights at the council level to pre-empt other deals being sought by short-term online rental companies.

Maybe Brian Chesky's "fuck hotels" frontback pic may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

As tensions continue to mount between Airbnb and the hotel industry, I've experienced an increase in light-hearted trash talking from my fellow Cornell hotel school grads who are always so quick to point out my first crossover to the dark side with Expedia, and now ever darker having recently joined Airbnb.

I still love the majesty and cultural richness of many hotels, and I believe that the basic principles of hospitality remain a strong common denominator between hotels and Airbnb.  But perhaps that's a bit too philosophical for most executives when it comes down to market share and financial statements.

From my point of view, it's not at all dark on this side.  In fact, the future is really bright thanks to visionary leaders like Brian who want to create Shared Cities all over the world, "rogue" hoteliers like the legendary Chip Conley who inspired me a decade ago to pursue hospitality as a career, and a deeply passionate and energetic Airbnb team working together with so much love for what they are doing.

I may have to kiss my Cornell Hotel Society hopes goodbye, but helping build Airbnb's vision to create shared cities and provide travelers uniquely local experiences is going to be oh so much sweeter.  :-)

Did Google just take a monster step towards becoming an OTA?

There's been a lot of press the past couple days on Google's licensing deal with Room 77.  Some articles have been a bit bold in claiming that Google is entering the hotel booking business as an OTA. This would actually mean Google itself is transacting hotel bookings, which doesn't seem to be the case (just yet?).

There's also been a lot of hype over the big increase in Google's hotel content (photos, reviews, etc.) to make its search results resemble those of Priceline and Expedia, for example.  If I'm not mistaken though, this is part of a larger initiative to increase local business content across the board and isn't focused exclusively on hotels just for the sake of making them more bookable on Google search results.

But one thing is for sure . . . the more enhanced content Google adds, the more likely customers may begin their hotel search on Google versus the OTA sites.  And with the addition of Room 77's extensive database of hotel level information such as room views and floor plans, as well as its advanced hotel search algorithms, Google just may have made its biggest step yet in possibly becoming a full end-to-end hotel search and booking engine (and in the process eventually trumping TripAdvisor and OTAs).

I remain doubtful Google would get that low in the purchase funnel though.  My guess is they are amassing the best possible content at the hotel level in a drive to become the undisputed starting point for consumers doing a hotel search.  Over time, Google's hotel search volumes will increase, and if they can simultaneously ramp up ad spending from the non usual suspects (i.e. more hotels spending on adwords and not just the OTAs), it's plain simple math Google can squeeze billions more out of the travel vertical than it already makes today.

For now though, I can't help but wonder how Priceline and Expedia, some of Google's biggest adwords customers, feel about Google's licensing deal with Room 77 and what that might foreshadow.

Airbrb helps you monetize your empty work desk when you're away

Breaking news in the sharing economy!!!

Despite record revenue growth in their core business of short term property rentals, Airbnb is adding a new service that lets office workers rent out their office desks, amenities included.

If you're planning to take a vacation from work, hang out in the pantry, or do some extended reading on the can, Airbnb will help you rent out your office desk for a handsome sum until you get back.  It's magnificently called AirBRB.

 
Airbnb Presents: Airbrb from Airbnb on Vimeo.

Expedia gets sexier with a home page makeover, and smarter with full responsive design

I am totally digging Expedia's new homepage, although it's been overdue for a makeover.  The new design finally plays to the user's imagination instead of serving a plethora of often half ass travel deals all over the screen.

The sleekness and simplicity of the new Expedia homepage makes way for a more responsive design on a slew of mobile devices, but unfortunately many of Expedia's international sites haven't been touched up quite yet.  The Singapore site is below . . . see how busy the old design used to be?

While Expedia's new design comes a few steps closer to the visual dreaminess and slickness of Airbnb, its multi-product offerings of hotels, flights, packages, cars, cruises, and activities will make it tough to get much more uncluttered.

Update - Check out this tnooz post to see the evolution of Expedia's homepage design since 1996.

Now if only Orbitz will do the world a favor and tidy things up a bit on their homepage.  I mean seriously, how do I even make a search with all the merchandizing attacking me?  Although once you turn on your browser's ad blocker, Orbitz will undoubtedly have more white space than all the rest.

UberX makes a sneak preview in Singapore, with prices slashed in half

UberX was pretty much the only way I got around during my recent visit home to San Francisco.  And starting yesterday, it just might be the only way I get around Singapore from now on.

Uber has kicked off a beta of its lower cost UberX service in Singapore, where it previously offered only UberBlack cars.  If I'm not mistaken, this marks Asia's first taste of the lower cost service from Uber.

I'm not exactly sure how I got selected, but yours truly was among the fortunate ones with an opportunity to test drive the new UberX service.  I rejoiced after seeing the base fare slashed in half compared to UberBlack, and the per kilometer fare was more than half off.  At those prices, I'd be more than satisfied with a Camry or Corolla, which are the UberX cars currently being used, instead of the Mercedes or BMW sedans of UberBlack service.

But my smile was short lived.  The three times I fired up my Uber app, my estimated wait for an UberX to arrive at my pickup location was about 15 minutes on each attempt.   I'm hoping this will be improvd and maybe in a few weeks if/when more UberX drivers hit the road, this will become a non issue.

Uber has been a disruptor of local taxi companies since they first appeared on the streets with UberBlack.  They basically got licensed black car drivers with idle time to start picking up riders who might have otherwise booked or flagged down a normal cab.  Uber also changed the ball game with the most simple and easy to use mobile app for ride booking services.  Seriously, you just can't even compare the user experience on Uber's app with the clunky and ugly Comfort DelGro app.

Now UberX takes that disruption several degrees further by letting any Tom, Dick, or Harry become a driver without a special license.  Not only does this increase supply for consumers and increases competition with local cabs, but it also encourages drivers to drive for Uber instead of the local taxi companies (which could mean less revenue for those companies and also the government).  

I'm not sure if Singapore's UberX drivers are average people like you and me, or if they still hold valid operating licenses like their UberBlack limo driver counterparts.  Not that I really care though, as long as the fares continue to be half that of UberBlack here in Singapore.

Airbnb scores a gold medal at Sochi for real time marketing

If real time marketing were a sport, Airbnb would easily win the gold at Sochi this year for their responses to the trending #SochiProblems hashtag on Twitter.  Much like the epic fail of Olympic rings during the opening ceremony, the hashtag depicted hotels with epic fails including missing door handles, double toilets, questionable electrical wiring, and Johnny Quinn using his luge skills to break out of his locked bathroom door.

Once #SochiProblems started trending with examples of Sochi's dismal hospitality standards, Airbnb seized the opportunity to tweet about the stylish (and functional) lodging alternatives available on their site.  Some of these options greatly outshined the Sochi hotels, where the average score of the hotels on Tripadvisor is in the less than desirable range of 3 to 3.5 (out of 5).  To take it one step further, Airbnb even started sending tweets directly to journalists that had whined about their Sochi hotel problems, tempting them with descriptions and house porn photography of Airbnb listings where they could have been resting their heads at night. 

Although it's not really clear whether or not any of the journalists with #SochiProblems ended up swapping in their hotels from hell for an Airbnb listing, the vacation rental company will go home with the gold for offering a creative real time solution for those in need of a place to stay where the door to the room actually closes.  And unlike some of the hotels in Sochi, there won't be any spying going on in the bathrooms.

And if Airbnb gets a gold medal, then Sochi tourism places dead last.  With all the #SochiProblems broadcast all over the media, it's doubtful Sochi will get much of a prolonged tourism boost it's banking on after the Olympics are over.