Posts tagged “AirBnB”

When AirBnB began their journey they recognised they had to overcome one significant hurdle: trust. How could they ensure – as far as possible – that hosts and guests would have the maximum reassurance that both parties would uphold their sides of the deal?


Reviews became the answer…

They took a long hard look at TripAdvisor. How to emulate them, but go one better? Simple: don’t just invite reviews, but make reviews mandatory – on both sides of the equation. Now, for every stay, there’s a review by the guest and a review of the guest by the host.


The impact:

First we’ll look at this from the consumers’ point-of-view, it answers all these questions at a stroke:

• Am I getting all their guests’ opinions? 
• Was the stay value for money?
• Did anyone not enjoy their stay? And, if not, why not?
• Are the hosts painting the full picture? 

And now from the business’s…

• They know their guest is getting the full picture. They know the guest can rely on their fellow guests – completely. They know it gives their potential guest the confidence to go ahead and book.

And a word for the nay-sayers:


We have all heard the AirBnB horror stories. They are invariably as a result of one or both parties going off-piste and not communicating (or paying) through AirBnB. bear in mind that AirBnB list 1.5 million properties across 34,000 cities – it works!


Become like AirBnB

Explain to your customers that leaving a review is considered standard practice for your business, and explain why:

• because you rely on them 
• because your potential clients rely on them

 …then you can sit back and watch the business roll in.



N.B. At HelpHound we are proud that our review management system – Dialogue™ – only works for good businesses. If you think your business will attract a lot of negative reviews, then perhaps you need to address whatever failings might cause your customers to write them before you join.

Dialogue does incorporate a great – and extremely effective – dispute resolution mechanism (called Resolution™); and our clients and their customers do make use of it. An average of 8% of all reviews go through Resolution – with over 97% of those resulting in a satisfactory outcome for both parties.

Both Uber and AirBnB were early adopters of reviews – they knew they were a major key to the credibility of their service; how else were they going to gain that crucial element of trust from their potential users?

here’s Uber:

And AirBnB:

With most successful businesses there is one key element that ensured that success. With Facebook it was the introduction of the ‘relationship status’ field (remember Bebo – Facebook’s predecessor? No – not many people do!). Without reviews Uber and AirBnB might still be struggling startups.

So: if you are in a business where trust is a key element of your potential customers’ decision making process (and we are struggling to think of a business where it is not) you need to think seriously about adopting a credible review management system. Otherwise, one day, you may find your business in the same hole that London cabbies and small hoteliers find themselves in today.

Postscript for our clients: Are you impressed by Paolo’s responses? Then check your module to make sure that your responses are right up-to-date.

In our last article we referenced Bill Tancer’s book ‘Everyone’s a Critic’. Here‘s another great article by Bill.


Its core message is that businesses such as Uber and AirBnB could not exist (and certainly would not have grown as they have) without reviews. 

So here’s our question for those of you who are not yet clients: how on earth does any other business think it is going to succeed without them?

£400 a night

That’s over 10 stays for each and every hotel in Paris.


So when are hoteliers going to start taking notice, and, even more importantly, reacting?


Denial


Here are some of the things hospitality professionals are saying about AirBnB:

• They are downmarket
• They don’t provide the level of service we do
• They are in the wrong area
• They are not covered by the same insurance as we are

…and we are not going to argue those points here, just let the numbers speak for themselves.

Reality


The truth of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of AirBnB-ers (who are no longer student backpackers – the average price for a night in Paris is over 80 euros) are choosing to stay at an airBnB because they like the experience. how do we know this? Because AirBnB gets them to write reviews.

AirBnB hosts know they will only get a great review if they go the extra mile, so they do. They provide a great concierge service: they tell their guests about local restaurants, site-seeing opportunities, transport and nightlife, and they make sure the rooms are prepared to their guests’ specific requirements.


How to compete?


Hotels must become more guest-friendly. banish the days of ‘a nod from the doorman and keys handed to the guest with nothing more than a smile.’ Greet your guest, spend time to understand their requirements, help them to get the most from their stay.


Hotels that do this will have nothing to fear from AirBnB, but those who continue in denial will suffer.

You may not immediately see AirBnB as a direct competitor (if you don’t we suggest you read this piece in the Guardian, it also details AirBnB’s phenomenal growth), but they are filling hundred’s of thousand of rooms a month, and we don’t believe those travelers would have simply stayed at home without AirBnB.

No matter: you should be aware of the aspects of AirBnB’s offer that attract; the video we have linked to above does have relevance (remember we visit hundreds of hotels a year ourselves), and we would be very surprised if there was absolutely nothing to be gained from viewing it.

And there are lessons for us in there as well: in 2014 we will be introducing a forum for our members. There you will be able to interact and discuss topical issues – including ways to get the very best from your membership of Dialogue.

While we’re on – note that AirBnB has proritised ‘reviews’ over ‘description’ “because we think they’re way more important”: second only to images (see 55.15 in the video).


Meanwhile, please do comment on the posts in this blog!