Hotels Playing Up Services to Push Strongly Into Short-Term Rentals

Santa Fe, New Mexico hotel La Fonda's move to branch into short-term rentals to accommodate the demand for hotel guests is yet another affirmation in the world of blended travel.

Hotels have been playing the rental game for a while now, but now is the time to play the wild card — economies of scale. To pander to the globe-trotting "bleisure" traveler (business plus leisure), all hotels need to do is strike that delicate balance between privacy and community, hyper-personalize amenities to imbue a sense of home and there they can have it — a customer who doesn't care if it's a rental or a hotel so long as it has room service.

Recently speaking at Skift’s Future of Lodging event in London, Richard Clarke, managing director at AB Bernstein agreed that the demand for overnight hotel stays has grown at about 4 percent a year, on average fairly steadily for a long stretch of time. This long-term growth is driven by a rising middle class in emerging markets.

In January last year, La Fonda bou