This modern two BR Victorian in San Francisco’s Noe Valley is $300/nt (Image: Airbnb)
Business travelers currently account for a small percentage of accommodations rental site Airbnb’s customer base, but the company has started testing a new tactic aimed at boosting those numbers substantially.
The tech website Tnooz reports that Airbnb has a pilot project underway in the San Francisco Bay Area that lets business travelers find member properties tailored to meet their special needs. By pre-sorting its member properties in a given area, the site will help road warriors find appropriate lodging with a minimum of search time.
Although the program isn’t public yet, Tnooz displayed a list of standards Airbnb properties are expected to meet in order to qualify as a business-ready listing. It includes things like 24-hour access to keys on check-in day, Wi-Fi, laptop-friendly work spaces, coffee/tea, and more, as well as a minimum 60 percent level of five-star ratings for cleanliness, accuracy of listing, and overall user reviews.
Related: Airbnb for a business trip? Mixed results
Airbnb last year formed a link with corporate expense reporting giant Concur so that business travelers could use the latter’s booking tools to reserve member properties.
By room count, Airbnb is already well ahead of the largest hotel companies, and its growing accommodations-sharing business continues to draw some regulatory flack in certain cities.
Have you used Airbnb yet? How would you rate the experience? Please leave your comments below.
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Lots of Airbnb properties have a minimum number of nights. The property owner can, I believe, read reviews of potential renters before accepting them too.
Whatever… I’m certainly in favor of innovation in the free market and of increasing competition as much as possible. But I think Airbnb should look at this situation in reverse, too. As a property owner who might be willing to rent out my properties to Airbnb, I’d love to see a system where I could restrict my customers to business travelers only and not the general public.
This has nothing to do with discrimination or unfair housing practices. It’s a lot easier for me to manage 1 customer who stays 10 nights than to manage 10 customers who stay 1 night each. I’m also nervous about letting total strangers live in my home, and I’d feel less nervous if my customers were all business travelers who (one assumes) would be older and less likely to trash the place. Just Google “Airbnb horror stories” to hear cases about guests who ransack, steal, and set up meth labs. These are probably only tiny exceptions to a general pattern of successful Airbnb stays, but they’re enough to worry me.