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| Vice President—Content/Editorial Director, Ruthanne Terrero |
By now you’ve heard of Airbnb, the web service that allows you to rent out partial space or entirely take over someone’s home. At its inception, it was widely used by younger travelers comfortable with sharing a vetted apartment with strangers in a destination they wanted to explore. The popularity and the reach of the service have grown, however. There’s now a large amount of inventory available all over the world, supplied by all sorts of people willing to list their homes.
Travelers of all types are also growing comfortable with the concept, which lets them live like a local in comfortable quarters while they’re on vacation. A full home rental also provides plenty of space to families with several children, nannies or grandparents who don’t want to be crammed into a series of connecting rooms in a hotel.
Airbnb and similar service providers are disrupting the hotel industry, which is keeping a close eye on them and will likely find some way to work alongside of them. (Could the big brands perhaps create their own collection of homes to rent out and offer points from their loyalty programs to those who participate?)
My hunch is this type of service may already be disrupting the travel agent business as well. What’s to keep your client from booking a large home with an online service for that multigenerational trip they want to take? It’s not just about those who want to save money, either. I’ve heard advisors say that even their most affluent clients have expressed curiosity in the service as well.
I say it’s time to be fully proactive about this issue and find a way to work with it or around it. Seek out suppliers that rent out homes who work with travel advisors. You can do this via your consortia or host agency. Determine what the benefits of working with this supplier are vs. a home-sharing model. Do the homes you have access to work with a management company that completely vets the accommodations prior to a stay? Do they provide housekeeping services that would ordinarily be supplied by a hotel? Reach out to those clients you suspect might be curious about the home-sharing model and let them know you have access to homes as well, with added benefits. Communicate in the most tactful manner possible that when they go on vacation they’re not going to want to wash dishes and change linens, which is exactly what they’ll be doing if they go it alone with a home-sharing site. You’ll have their back—if they book through you—if anything goes awry and you’ll also be able to supply a personal chef and chauffeur for them if they want that.
So often I’ll hear agents despair that good clients have booked a vacation on their own because they didn’t think their travel advisor handled that type of trip or because “they didn’t want to bother them.” It could be a quick domestic business trip or a simple group tour to Europe. It’s vital you communicate to your clients that you are ready and able to handle all of their travel needs. And be clear about it. Don’t give an anemic description of your services in your tagline. Shout out the fact that no booking is too small and that you’ll work with them creatively on all trip types. Provide examples of past itineraries you’ve put together so that they’ll have a sense of what’s possible.
It’s time for you to intervene in a forthright manner before the next supply disrupter puts a dent in your business.