AirBnB Lists Anything Everywhere All at Once

By Ron Lee
Published: 02/25/23 Topics: Advertising, AirBnB, Booking.com, Expedia, Online Travel Agents (OTAs), TripAdvisor, Vacation Rental Association, Vacation Rentals, VRBO.com Comments: 0

AirBnB’s quest to make every home in the world into a "shared’ living space shows their appetite for growth and profitability even at the expense of those they serve.

AirBnB and others are really nothing more than an easily distributed list of classified ads. Albeit with the ability to print more quickly, include more information, display pretty pictures and allow consumers to instantly buy the product.

Because the Internet has simply remove the burden of mechanically compiling, editing and printing a media, like many Internet businesses in most industries, companies like AirBnB entice investors that they can "Scale" without limitation.

Other than governmental intervention, there really is no obstruction to listing every space, everywhere in the world all at once. (My apologies to the movie of similar name)

A close look at comments made by AirBnB’s immature CEO Brian Chesky reveal a fatal flaw in the company’s vision. As the economy has stalled and consumers are traveling less, which means a flattening or downturn in travel expenditures in total.

Some vacation home owners are squealing about dropping rental income which can be directly attributed to negative economic news. These investors are the ones who jumped on the AirBnB gravy train that was running fast and furious during Covid.

But now that demand is lower, what dose the CEO do? He runs a campaign to entice far more people to put their homes into rental. He foists grandiose projects about AirBnB’s income which misleads home owners into thinking they will follow in his footsteps.

It seems as if AirBnB will list any kind of "Lodging" in any kind of area and do so willingly. AirBnB’s argument must be that they have become so much the "Darling" of the lodging industry that they can attract enough new guests to fill every property.

Unfortunately that has never been the case. Smart lodging managers have always used all other possible media - such as VRBO, Expedia, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and many more. But even with heavy use of all possible advertising websites, supply can outstrip demand.

Chesky’s ploy will hurt existing AirBnB properties and short-change those he misleads into listing. But why should he care? The more inventory he gets the better for AirBnB, even if all the "Vendors" make less.

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Author: Ron Lee – Volunteer, Vacation Rental Association
Blog #: 0948 – 02/25/23

Sponsor: VRAI – Inside information from a reliable not-for-profit group. Speak your mind. Listen with open ears. For Vacation Rental Professionals – VacationRentalAssociation.com

Website Channels That Ignore Icalendar

By Wm. May
Published: 03/31/16 Topics: Online Travel Agents (OTAs) Comments: 0

Everyone knows that someday, all vacation rental advertising portals will be part of a global spider web of property synchronization. Managers will list property information in just one place and it will automatically appear on every portal they choose.

This is how the Multiple Listing Services work for real estate sales. No sales agent could survive nowadays without the MLS because their listings are distributed just about everywhere it's possible to find buyers.

Way back when we first met the pleasant guys at Escapia software - Chris Kemp and Michael Kline - distribution was one of the primary benefits they were seeking for their cloud based software. Admittedly, it took them a long time to pull it off.

SLOW DOWN

After the sale of Escapia to Homeaway the number of portals that accept full integration with Escapia has grown, albeit it slowly. When Homeaway purchased various software platforms from Instant Software the same thing happened.

Reportedly Homeaway charges a hefty fee to portals who want to integrate, and then siphons off a big chunk of the commissions or listing fees. Whether by design, delay or pricing the vast majority of websites still do not display listings directly from HomeAway.

Today, a number of Channel Management businesses have sprung up to help non-HomeAway software users synchronize their bookings. They know managers want to distribute advertising to every possible portal, and then on to all kinds of travel and tourism websites.

Managers are begging for that day to come soon.

USING ICAL

For starters, some managers have adopted the "iCalendar" standard of calendar formatting and data exchange that was created by the "Internet Engineering Task Force Calendaring and Scheduling Working Group" (What a mouthful) and can be used by thousands of calendaring systems, for all kinds of uses, not just rentals.

Dozens of vacation rental portals have adopted the use of Ical including Homeaway, FlipKey, Vacation Home Rentals (Now owned by TripAdvisor as is Flipkey) and others.

While full integration must be the future, iCalendar allows automatic updating of bookings with little or no work by managers. Setting it up on most websites is a snap. Some even synchronized both ways.

For example, you can use Homeaway as your primary calendar, and then feed it to other websites. But therein lies a problem.

If you want to use other software as your primary calendar, Homeaway refuses to accept it as an import. On industry forums including HomeAway's, managers have pleaded for Ical to Homeaway uploads for a long time.

Asking a HomeAway phone rep to add this feature produces a non response, 'I suggest you post it as a request with us," but that has yielded no action from Homeaway over the years.

Clearly there is no technical reason for HomeAway to refuse iCalendar imports. So it must be presumed that HomeAway fears the eventual democratization of vacation rental advertising.

By refusing to import iCalendar, HomeAway delays competitors even though it handicaps managers who spend so much advertising with them. But it does create hurdles for other portals and software makers.

iCalendar is the key they are refusing to allow others to unlock.

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Author: Wm. May, Vacation Rental Association
Blog #: 0006 – 03/31/16