{"id":728,"date":"2015-09-13T23:54:17","date_gmt":"2015-09-14T03:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/airbnb-required-improvements-for-additional-value\/"},"modified":"2015-09-15T02:28:59","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T06:28:59","slug":"airbnb-stop-locking-guests-out","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/airbnb-stop-locking-guests-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Airbnb: Stop Locking Guests Out!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.airbnb.com\/\">Airbnb<\/a>\u00a0has been growing tremendously over the past few years, with room availability reaching\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/qz.com\/329735\/airbnb-will-soon-be-booking-more-rooms-than-the-worlds-largest-hotel-chains\/\">1 million rooms in December 2014<\/a>,\u00a0exceeding\u00a0rooms of\u00a0the largest hotel chain by room number. The success of the company has been supported \u00a0by its\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/nextjuggernaut.com\/blog\/airbnb-business-model-canvas-how-airbnb-works-revenue-insights\/\">unique business model<\/a>\u00a0that minimizes its costs\u00a0while\u00a0positioning itself as the link between hosts and guests, and collecting fees from both sides. The business model is\u00a0supplemented\u00a0by\u00a0the company&#8217;s culture that allows employees to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/firstround.com\/review\/How-design-thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-startup-to-billion-dollar-business\/\">continuously develop and test ideas<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0yield better results.<\/p>\n<p>Is\u00a0the current level of innovation\u00a0sufficient to enable Airbnb to sustain its growth? Probably not &#8211; a lot more needs to be done.<\/p>\n<p>During one of my first Airbnb experiences in the Dominican Republic, my friends and I booked a villa after contacting the host and inquiring about it, and headed on a 6-hour drive before receiving a confirmation from the host or agreeing on key pickup. The host was on a different time zone (6 hours ahead) and was already asleep. We luckily had a phone that could make international calls and managed to call him as we arrived to the neighborhood. We were even luckier that he is an early bird that wakes up at 5 A.M. and got access to the house.<\/p>\n<p>I am positive that many guests had similar experiences, and in order for Airbnb to maintain a pool of loyal hosts and guests, these incidents should be minimized. Airbnb can further disrupt the industry by moving to the next stage of innovation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keyless Access:\u00a0in order to remove the hassle of hosts meeting up with guests to hand keys to them upon arrival, Airbnb should request hosts to invest in changing their doorknob to one that requires no key. The doorknob could either have a code that can be shared with guests upon confirmation, or could enable scanning a code using the app that gives access to guests.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dawsonsafeandlock.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/keyless-home-entry.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Business Traveler Acquisition: in addition to keyless access, Airbnb\u00a0could\u00a0create\u00a0a point of contact in each community to enable\u00a0companies\u00a0to book multiple rooms within vicinity for business travelers. This\u00a0could enable the company to\u00a0increase its market share of business travelers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Consistent Offering: Airbnb hosts have different amenities provided by hosts across listings, which detoriarates the service when\u00a0guests book a room without paying sufficient details to included amenities. This could reduce customers&#8217;\u00a0level of satisfaction. To improve this, the company should request all hosts to have a standard set of amenities that cannot be overlooked (towels, bed sheets, wifi access, etc).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Customer Stickiness: in order for the company to enhance its customer loyalty and become the first company of choice for travelers, it should start a customer loyalty program that rewards its customers for their loyalty. To ensure that the reward system is fair,\u00a0the number of points rewarded should be a function of the number of rooms per unit or dollars spent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Adjusting for Long Term Planners: Airbnb\u00a0potentially loses customers that plan over the long term when the host of their selected room cannot decide on the availability of the room ahead of time. If a customer faces this problem multiple times,\u00a0the company might lose him\/ her. To avoid this, Airbnb should keep track of such incidents and force hosts to\u00a0show\u00a0a night as available only when they are\u00a0sure that they can offer it to guests.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tripadvisor.com\/TripAdvisorInsights\/n1958\/how-win-back-customers-youre-losing-airbnb\" target=\"_blank\">Airbnb has many advantages <\/a>over hotels for customers, but it is\u00a0expected that\u00a0hotel chains\u00a0will fight back legally and operationally to protect their industry and revenues. The company has been a digital winner thus far, but the future of its sustainable growth and expansion, and its winning strategy, will depend on its second level of innovation.\u00a0To ensure its continued success, Airbnb should innovate to achieve further\u00a0growth, create more\u00a0value for itself as well as for\u00a0hosts and guests, capture more of the created value, and increase customer loyalty. Despite its success so far, Airbnb needs to accelerate the introduction of these\u00a0improvements, which\u00a0will lead to increased revenues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How can Airbnb innovate to sustain growth, attract more customers, increase customer loyalty, and create more value?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"class_list":["post-728","hck-submission","type-hck-submission","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"connected_submission_link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/assignment\/digital-winners-and-losers\/","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Airbnb: Stop Locking Guests Out! - Digital Innovation and Transformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/airbnb-stop-locking-guests-out\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Airbnb: Stop Locking Guests Out! 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