Monday, February 17, 2014

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.





Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Online travel and the underlying web of B2C and (many) B2B companies

Happy new year of the horse!  I'm celebrating Chinese New Year with my family in San Francisco bay area, followed by my first Startup Grind 2014 conference in Mountain View.

I won't have time to do much blogging in between my new year family feasts, but here's an interesting graphic I thought I could quickly share.  I came across this 'map' which helps categorize the various players and sub sectors within the travel vertical.  Full credit to Mozio for putting this together.  Despite some missing companies and those that could straddle across several buckets, this really is a comprehensive one-stop shop of a graphic.

Although I've worked many years in the travel industry in hotels, activities, and OTAs, I'm still amazed by the expansive underlying plumbing in online travel, especially on the B2B side.