There is a perfect storm going on in the digital accommodation distribution space that is set to change the legacy business of booking property rentals online. In the past the hotel trade has seen a mass migration away from hotel chain booking systems into OTA’s (online travel agencies).
Today, international hospitality groups have seen their costs rise as a direct result of a growing reliance on OTA’s). When you speak to hoteliers the common comment is, they never saw the writing on the wall, until it was too late. Deer in the headlights? Trump versus Hillary? You bet.
One new deal that has caught my attention in the real estate space is an alliance between one of the world’s biggest cloud based hospitality platforms SiteMinder and the RentalsCombined.net. The latter is a niche player in condo hotels, apartments and vacation rentals. In essence the curtain between hotel bookings and non-traditional real estate rentals is now being lift and the lined erased in a move towards the evolving sharing economy.
There is little doubt that Airbnb has been the major driver of change, and certainly it’s elevated the once lowly property rental market onto a far broader stage. For condo, apartment and villa owners the access to a far more sophisticated travel portal and deep dive into the mainstream in a clear sign of how things are changing.
For Asia’s real estate market, yield-oriented buyers are a fact of the current state of play, hence the push for tech solutions and a shift towards hotel like structure makes sense. Though as hotel owners have found the OTA shift, has taken its toll in higher commissions, which has eroded bottom lines. This may be the same point for property rentals as the quest for increased revenue is creating a drift into the hotel space.
