Kevin Hoong
HOMESHARING giant Airbnb is continuing its aggressive push into the business travel market despite indicators showing that its foray into the corporate travel world is seeing mixed results so far.
The services Airbnb has developed for business travellers have found an uptake among companies like Autodesk, which introduced Airbnb for Business in March to provide more options for its employees, said Asia-Pacific travel manager Adriana Nainggolan.
“There is no preference from one to the other as each (vendor) has its own unique offering,” she said, adding that it took some time for Autodesk to integrate the Airbnb tool, including training employees and assimilating the process across various departments.
But Manulife Indonesia, despite using sharing economy options for several years now, is still adopting a wait-and-see stance to enrol Airbnb for Business, travel manager Flora Josephine told TTG Asia.
“We need to (analyse) it deeply since this is new. We have not yet used Airbnb as our vendor and put it in our travel policy,” she said.
According to a survey of 68 travel managers conducted by TTG Asia Media’s Events Group in partnership with Oakwood Worldwide, only 23.4 per cent of respondents will use sharing economy providers, while the rest indicated either negatively (35.9 per cent) or are unsure.
Tobias Ragge, CEO of HRS, said: “Airbnb is a great concept for leisure travellers but their properties are not a real alternative to a hotel, at least for the business traveller with a travel pattern of one- to two-night stays.”
But an Airbnb property “makes a lot of sense” for long-term stays or in cities such as San Francisco where hotel inventory is limited and rates are inflated, he opined.
Ragge also thinks Airbnb is unlikely to create any “tectonic shift” in the corporate travel landscape. “I see maybe 10-15 per cent of the market taken by shared economy providers at some point, but hotels are here to stay.”
But since launching the Airbnb for Business suite of tools in July 2015, Airbnb has done a number of initiatives to position itself as a credible alternative accommodation provider for corporate travellers.
This includes its recent move to integrate with major management systems like BCD Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel to “marry with the gold standards of corporate travel”, said Kevin Hoong, business travel lead, Asia-Pacific at Airbnb.
“Another thing we did is to integrate our platform with top duty of care providers like International SOS and iJET,” added Hoong, signalling Airbnb’s willingness to address duty of care concerns to better serve corporate travellers.
Hoong said Airbnb business-ready options now number in the “tens of thousands” out of its total inventory of 2.5 million homes.
“We encourage our hosts to make their home business-ready (by) providing them with free carbon monoxide and smoke detectors. We also partner with providers of automated key locks under the Host Assist programme,” he shared.
Hoong said the company plans to “double down” on existing TMC partnerships and raise awareness of Airbnb for Business. “Sponsoring CTW Asia-Pacific is one example how we want to be more proactive in this region,” he said.
