Airbnb announced its partnership with the Thai Boutique Accommodation Trade Association Partnership, a small association of Thai hoteliers launched just two years ago, at a press conference in Bangkok yesterday.
A little background info: Airbnb launched a decade ago as a place where San Franciscans could offer guests an air mattress in their apartment and get US$80 per night.
The visitors got a cheap accommodation in one of the world’s most expensive cities and the chance to “meet some cool people that live in San Francisco,” according to Airbnb’s Southeast Asia Manager Mike Orgill.
Today the online platform offers 5 million properties globally and — as of next month — 50 of those listed in Thailand will be hotels.
For us, the more the merrier. When we log onto an accommodation platform, the more kinds of places we see, the better, but we were concerned that Airbnb’s core customers — the kind of traveler who only opts to stay at Airbnbs and not hotels, the ones who crave authentic experiences — might be turned off by finding hotels on their beloved DIY-ish website.
We asked Orgill, who told us that this very group — the taste-making millennial core clients — makes up about 60 percent of the site’s users. So, does Orgill think that there’s a possibility that the addition of boutique hotels will dilute the homestay model?
He said that the expanded model is good for the Airbnb customer since many of the boutique stays are in out-of-the-way spots, and being “off the beaten path” is something their customers value.
For instance, The Beat, a quirky boutique hotel tucked away at the back of Phra Kanong’s W District will be among those listed. The venue, where each room is themed after a Beat-era poet, isn’t often on Bangkok best of boutique hotel lists and most locals I mentioned it to had not heard of it either.
“This will let people stay in some of the coolest boutique hotels.” It also lets them see neighborhoods they might have missed, Orgill explains, as well as offers side benefits to local business owners like shopkeepers and restaurateurs, who can also make money off the new foot traffic.
It’s true that local entrepreneurs that own boutique hotels don’t often have the staff, reach, or marketing budget to connect globally in the way that Airbnb can do for them, as hotel marketer Sidd Ketkar, echoed in this interview, and it’s certainly helpful to Airbnb since, well, more money is good, that’s business’s main model, right?
But is it good for the customer? Orgill said the company is still “focusing on unique, authentic and local accommodation” but now they are providing a fuller range of stays that still offer those experiences. “That can be something as simple as someone’s spare bedroom or it could be a boutique hotel. We try not to be too definitive,” he said.
“In the original days, we said Airbnb has to be about air mattresses. It was staunchly an air mattress platform. Then, we were a private room platform. Then, someone wanted to offer a great apartment, so we became an apartment and home platform. We’ve had this evolution. About a year and a half ago, we revisited ‘what are we as a platform?’ and, fundamentally, it’s about anybody that’s able to provide unique, authentic hospitality that’s powered by people.”
Nothing really excludes a hotel from being included, he said, not even what seem like obvious disqualifiers like number of rooms or appearance on too many other booking platforms.
“So we want to offer any kind of experience that fits our mold — including boutique hotels,” he said.
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