Attitude towards sharing economy

The sharing economy platforms such as Airbnb and Uber have grown in popularity in recent years, and they have altered the way human beings

commute, travel, and borrow, among other things. John (2018) supports that “Sharing” as a metaphor, the most active way of structuring the sharing economy as a technological economy and injecting it with digital connotations can be found online in the causal relationship between hypothetical young people sharing, who are willing to share offline. Simply put, the idea put forward is that young people are so used to and skilled at sharing online that they are more willing to share their own stuff.

Marketing Strategy of Airbnb

Airbnb is a service that connects travellers and homeowners with a variety of accommodation options. Airbnb Home Rental Community users can post, search, and book holiday rentals online via the web or mobile app. Founded in August 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, Airbnb’s homecoming rental community allows users to post, search, and book holiday rentals online via the web or mobile app (Brown, 2021).

“Feel at home anywhere you go in the world” —-Business Model Toolbox

Airbnb’s core value is that it strives to connect tourists with local hosts and provide access to unique places and local culture in their locations. By rethinking homestays and tourism experiences, Airbnb has contributed to one of the most exciting developments in the travel and hospitality sectors in the last decade ( Toolbox, Nd).

Airbnb has increased its short-term housing capacity in an unprecedented way by offering an online peer-to-peer trading platform, which has provoked strong reactions from the traditional commercial tourism accommodation industry and local regulators. Airbnb has many marketing channels as it uses both online and physical methods to showcase its wares.

These campaigns are primarily targeted at local customers to raise awareness of Airbnb through the city tours and unique experiences offered on the website. Many of the promotions also create a social buzz about the Airbnb brand through social media accounts and word of mouth.

Depending on the type of hotel, guests are charged a non-refundable service fee, usually less than 14.2% of the booking amount. Because larger bookings allow families or groups to save on other travel costs, more expensive bookings reduce the cost of services for guests.

In addition, for each completed booking, the organizer charges a 3% fee to cover the cost of processing the visitor’s payment. For Airbnb Plus, this cost can be even higher. Guests pay a service fee at the time of booking unless the host cancels or cancels the booking. If a user’s booking changes, Airbnb increases the cost of the service ( Brown, 2021).

Influencer marketing strategy

Working with influencers is one of the successful marketing strategies for many companies especially Airbnb. Numerous people follow influencers on social platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, and their lifestyles are widely influenced. Therefore, Airbnb’s digital marketing strategy is to work with global influencers to showcase their experience with Airbnb properties in order to increase and generate more sales. Celebrities usually post pictures of their luxurious Airbnb stay on popular social media platforms, as part of these collaborations. As a result, the increased website traffic and lead generation are generated.

The “Powerless” platform supervision

However, as the popularity of Airbnb has grown, so there are some scammers taking advantage of visitors looking for low-cost lodging throughout the world. In October of 2019, Allie Conti, a VICE contributor, revealed a nationwide scam in which a firm utilized make-up profiles and reviews to defraud guests out of their money. Following the publication of this story, Brian Chesky stated that Airbnb would take greater responsibility for what occurs on the platform (Deane, 2021). Screenshot

Scamming for money: Airbnb owners may require guests to pay a deposit or other fee using a third-party app.

When this happens, Airbnb loses control of the payment process and cannot give a refund for the money spent. Damages claims. If a guest causes damage to an Airbnb, the Airbnb host may charge the guest for the damages. However, some hosts will make bogus claims or try to extract excessive sums of money from guests for trivial situations ( Deane, 2021).

Most platforms have an internal policy team to review and supervise the platform content, but problems will continue to occur, and it is impossible to fully supervise the whole platform. As Gillespie (2018) shows that the improper remarks or things harmful to the operation of the platform should be deleted or the users who make such remarks should be banned from using the platform, which will not fully fulfil the regulatory role because users will continue to use other platforms.

User information is “leaked”

Another issue for the platform is user privacy issues. Especially for platforms like Airbnb that requires users to provide all detailed personal information. Citizens can no longer be confident that they have control over their own life if they lack privacy; the right to autonomy and sovereignty of individuals, which also always be balanced against the interests of communities. Transparency is another important public value that applies not only to data flows and algorithms but also to business models and platform ownership status (van Dijck et. al. 2018, pp. 140)

The Marketing Challenge After the Covid-19

Profit Problem

Airbnb lost $322 million in the first nine months of 2019, down from a profit of $200 million the year before, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, people are avoiding the virus by limiting their travel (Abril,2020).

Rebuilding Trust

The decision to give full refunds to guests who had to cancel their rentals due to the new crown virus has angered hosts and guests alike. Some Airbnb guests complained that the refund process was inconvenient, while hosts complained that the company did not take enough steps to compensate them for the loss of income. (Abril, 2020).

Malcolm, Clifford and their friends are planning to go out for a few days. What they found was a time machine. Nestled in the Silchar Valley is Arthur’s vintage desert oasis – “The House of Mercy”, as he affectionately calls it.

Future Development

With the epidemic wreaking havoc on travel, shared housing has taken a hit but remained stable as rentals became a refuge for those lacking the ability to travel to maintain social distance.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Airbnb has temporarily shelved a number of new projects, including forays into transportation and entertainment, to focus on its core strength, accommodation, despite its valuation recently falling from a high of $31 billion to $18 billion.

During the epidemic, Airbnb promoted privacy and control over the environment, including having its own kitchen rather than eating out. It introduced new cleaning rules and in late August reported that more than one million listings were certified as “enhanced clean”, which includes training on new cleaning guidelines on how to clean and sanitize. As a rule, it takes 45 minutes to clean each room (The New York Times, 2020).

Airbnb’s industry-leading improved cleaning routine, developed in collaboration with renowned experts in hospitality and medical hygiene, is now accessible to hosts in twelve countries, with additional places to follow shortly.
A five-step cleaning method, room-by-room checks, and other features are included in the protocol.
The cleaning recommendations may be used by travellers, hosts, and governments to assist promote the safe reopening of communities and travel.

Reference Lists

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Who Benefits from the “Sharing” Economy of Airbnb? | Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on World Wide Web. (2021). Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2872427.2874815
How Airbnb Makes Money. (2021). Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/112414/how-airbnb-makes-money.asp
2021 Airbnb Statistics: Usage, Demographics, and Revenue Growth – Stratos Jet Charters, Inc. (2021). Retrieved 12 October 2021, from https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/
Airbnb Business Model – Business Model Toolbox. (2021). Retrieved 13 October 2021, from https://bmtoolbox.net/stories/airbnb/
Airbnb’s three biggest challenges on its road to an IPO. (2021). Retrieved 14 October 2021, from https://fortune.com/2020/08/19/airbnb-ipo-challenges-intial-public-offering/
Airbnb Company(2020). Introducing Airbnb enhanced clean. Retrieved from 14 October, from https://news.airbnb.com/introducing-airbnb-enhanced-clean/
Corrie Driebusch, M. (2021). WSJ News Exclusive | Airbnb Plans to File for IPO in August. Retrieved 14 October 2021, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-plans-to-file-confidentially-for-ipo-in-august-11597164041
The Future of Airbnb (Published 2020). (2020). Retrieved 14 October 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/travel/airbnb-pandemic.html?searchResultPosition=1
Roberts, S. (2019). Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media. New Haven: Yale University Press. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.sydney.edu.au/10.12987/9780300245318
Gillespie, Tarleton (2017) ‘Governance by and through Platforms’, in J. Burgess, A. Marwick & T. Poell (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, London: SAGE, pp. 254-278.
Gillespie, T. (2018). Custodians of the Internet : Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press
John, Nicholas A. (2018) Sharing Economies. In The Age of Sharing. Cambridge: Polity. pp. 69-97.
Van Dijck, J., Poell, T. & de Waal, M. (2018) The Platform Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 5-32 (‘The Platform Society as a Contested Concept’).

2021 ARIN2610

ARIN2610 - Internet Transformations