Articles tagged “sharing economy”

In the same way that Onefinestay is the boutique Airbnb, this funding round is the smaller equivalent to its larger rival's recent $1.5 billion haul.

As the big sharing economy brands adapt their offerings to the managed travel market, barriers to use in the managed travel are coming down.

Hotels and the big online travel agencies will have to adapt to the sharing economy. Booking.com is already doing so in the form of nearly 300,000 vacation rentals and Expedia is taking its sweet time and will make a move when it has to.

As Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson points out, it isn't alway the first-mover that leads to a successful exit for a travel startup. Often it is later arrivals with a team that can really execute and has better networks or more ample funding.

Smart travel brands willing to stretch the definition of who they are and what they provide can offer as many opportunities for connection and discovery as alternative travel platforms, but changing the status quo — especially at large corporations — is a timely and costly task.

Released April 2015: Welcome to the Europe installment of Skift’s annual State of Travel report, a series focusing on individual major global industry regions.

New competition means hotels need to fight back and put hospitality and community first.

This is a good indicator of how millennials could still be retained by the organized hotel sector, though of course catering to the specific needs of this demographic is still important.

In the HomeAway-Airbnb-Booking.com love triangle, it is maverick Airbnb and Booking.com that actually have the most in common in terms of their preference for instantly confirmable bookings. And, like a scorned lover, HomeAway has been ratcheting up its criticisms of Booking.com.

The sharing economy has spread to every sector of the travel industry and every corner of the globe pushing it from a small community of global explorers to a full-fledged industry needing regulation and customer protection like the traditional market it sought to complement.