The explosion of Airbnb into the hospitality segment has left many with mixed emotions. For hotels, it’s given travelers new lodging options and, oftentimes, at a much better pricepoint with more amenities (kitchen, outdoor space, multi-bedroom, washer/dryer). Airbnb hosts have no problem drop, drop, dropping their nightly rate simply to get a booking, paying no mind to what they may be doing to overall price integrity. Meanwhile, Airbnb travelers have no problem cramming 10 people into a two-bedroom that sleeps four, simply to save a few bucks. Hotels can’t really play on their platform, so Airbnb has become a fierce competitor who’s been bruising and battering pace reports for many years now.
I am the Director of Sales and Marketing for a large-ish (by Lake Tahoe standards) lodging organization. Quite different than a hotel, we contract with individual owners to manage the rental of their studio to four-bedroom residences. Most of our inventory is luxury condominiums, set in the ski village at Northstar, we also have two to four-bedroom cabins, townhomes and estate residences in the upscale golf communities of Old Greenwood and Gray’s Crossing. When I started with my company in 2014, we had no presence or listings on Airbnb—not just in Tahoe, but across all divisions. One of my first efforts was to build our profile and create 10 introductory listings, which today has blossomed to 18 listings. Airbnb has proved to be an incredibly fruitful channel for us and not just financially, but also experientially….
Part of my role is ‘reputation management’ and this responsibility keeps me on my toes given all the review platforms available—i.e. Trip Advisor, Yelp, Google, Expedia, Hotels.com, Facebook and so on. While we, as a hospitality organization, are always willing and eager to receive guest feedback, it seems we now live in a society where many folks would rather hide behind their keyboard and blast a company versus picking up the phone, speaking to someone and allowing our staff to address and remedy a frustration. I find myself quite agitated when I read a publicly-broadcasted complaint, yet in conferring with our team I learn that the angered guest never made a call, never stopped by our front desk, never made us aware of any issue during their stay. It’s oftentimes weeks after check-out that we find out about a failing – depriving us of any opportunity to recover the situation. And so I’m left piecing together the occurrences, offering our apologies and, in some instances, professionally and politely defending our organization where gross inaccuracies have been published. But what happens when a guest is rude, unfairly demanding and purely out of line? As a hospitality group, we have no way to communicate this globally and there’s no reputation repercussion to the guest…. except Airbnb! Misters Chesky, Gebbia and Blecharcyzk added one teensy, tiny thing to their platform called the “guest rating” (much like eBay) and for homeowners and hospitality folk, it’s a BIG deal! Not only that, but the “public feedback” and “private feedback” was a stroke of brilliance (and fairness) that other review sites still haven’t, unfortunately, embraced. Gone are the days of a heated, scrunched-nose, irked traveler blasting a lodging group while we’re left to flounder on our backs, like a flailing turtle, unable to properly defend ourselves. With Airbnb, we, too, get to share our experiences with a guest and that rating/review attaches to his/her profile, either warning or encouraging other hosts around future bookings.
I’m always baffled that thousands of guests enjoy our residences each year and yet less than 30 people submit an online review. And, of those 30, about 20-25% do so simply because they have an ax to grind. We presume all the other folks had a good, or at the very least acceptable, getaway—so why not say so? When did we become programmed to rant when things go wrong and stay radio silent when they go right? Is this really painting a true picture for fellow vacationers?
Two years ago Tahoe experienced one of its biggest winters in decades. We were walloped with snow and while all that white stuff is good for skiing, the glaring excess of it presented many! significant challenges for our region; one biggie being loss of power. It went out several times and, in certain areas (read: my house) it was off for 3-4 days at a time (at Northstar it was off for about 6-8 hours). Crews did the very best they could to restore power as quickly as they could. Our team kept in regular touch with guests by email and visiting their residences to alert them of any/all updates, delivered flashlights and granola bars as well as invited guests to gather in our lobby where it was warm and hot coffee was available. But, low and behold, a couple scathing reviews surfaced around the lack of heat, power, closed highways, roads, stores, etc. I felt so disheartened that these people didn’t care about, nor mention, the efforts that had been made…. that their complaints centered around the natural disaster, not our hospitality… and disheartened that the dismal reviews and decline to our aggregate score was shining brightly for all to see with no rebuttal available to us except to jot a couple sentences about the unfortunate circumstances. We hoped rational, future guests would exercise an independent mind and take those negative remarks with a grain of salt. We also had to layoff an employee recently and he took to our review channels in destructive force, even creating new email addresses to submit additional damaging reviews— yet he never stayed a single night in our lodging and didn’t experience a moment of our hospitality, despite pretending otherwise.
I suppose what I appreciate most about the Airbnb review platform is the ability to thwart such false reviews and more importantly, that their guests are genuinely kind, grateful, friendly, enthusiastic and refreshingly positive. I get excited when I receive an email alerting me of a new Airbnb review. I know these folks will be honest yet fair, oftentimes sharing small hiccups in the private feedback section—allowing the good to shine through and allowing us to own our little snags and make improvements without suffering collateral damage to our precious online reputation.
So, from the bottom of my sales and marketing hospitality heart, thank you Airbnb guests for being your awesome selves-- we’ll trip all over ourselves to host you again and again. You have restored my once-wounded faith in guest-kind. And thank you Airbnb for being not only a pioneer, but an enduring lone isle, in offering a travel/lodging website that’s fair and honest to both guest and host. This, IMHO, has everybody playing a bit nicer in the sandbox and extending one another that near-extinct benefit of the doubt. I’ll continue to e-hug each and every one of you, wriggle, wag and smile as I see your reservations and reviews populate my inbox.
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