The following shows the established success of Airbnb in Australia and with it the begining of the decline. Airbnb: the changing face of accommodation booking; In the six months to December 2015, 27.1% of Australians 14+ (or 5.3 million people) reported having heard of Airbnb. While this is a substantially lower recognition rate than more established tourism industry players such as Flight Centre (70.0%) and Webjet.com.au (52.2%), it puts Airbnb ahead of well-known operators like STA Travel (26.9%), Lastminute.com.au (25.8%) and Stayz (23.0%). (from Roy Morgan market research)
What decline? Well may you ask, Airbnb is a web based platform which connects people looking for accomodation with people providing accomodation. In the past year there has been a growth in 'bells and whistles' seminars, conventions, Graded levels of hosts, just as exists in Amway or other operations. Dear Readers', Airbnb is nothing without people providing accomodation and the web platforn is all I want to be efficient so I can service my customers. Without well serviced accomodation providers Airbnb is on the way to being nothing more than a 'MySpace'.
As with every year, (four so far) my business has doubled especially with the growing popularity of Airbnb. Unlike the other international web platforms I use, Airbnb is the only one which regularly fails. From notification of enquiries, to being able to make dates available and unavailable. In the past month I have lost Upwards of $300 in bookings because I can no longer recieve notification of enquiries to stay because I have a windows phone not andoid, now. Instant booking is not an option. I have three rooms not a whole house available and fielding accomodation requests from all over the world I decide how many and who stays in my home. Again today I cannot access the Available/Blocked function for my calendar. Again I have a notification that my inbox which cannot provide updated messages received content. The list of little things goes on and on a global scale. That's correct, many are putting up with the problems because they are able to tolerate the small picture vision. Mine is of the big picture and hence I am voicing an opinion garnered from reading many host posts.
When the great idea was realised by the founders they knew that updating the web platform would be a must do in the future and that has eventuated already. The key to Airbnb's future and success, is not not 'bells and whistles' for the sake of appearing to be a recognised corporate management entity.
One of the operators replaced by Airbnb as a hosting site for me was Stayz (23.0%). Stayz was an original hosting/bnb site that ruled the market. They charged a $160 joining fee and apart from providing and promoting the listing site, that was all they did. The host/accomodation operator had to do all of the work in getting payment to their bank account, direct guests to the accomodation, all for an increasing fee schedule up to 13% or minimum or $15 per day booked, when I left. Dealing with 20 enquiries for 5 confirmations it was a labour intensive over priced service. Through a website that continually failed and faltered in so many ways. Which is what Airbnb is begining to do. The fees and charges are fine, the Airbnb website is struggling.
Dear Airbnb, stop polishing the bells and blowing the whistles, you are a web platform for our accomodation services and it is going to be a big job but the updates are a must do now. Your web failures are costing operators money and that means it is costing you money too!
