Hello,
I am in the middle of starting a local Airbnb/VRBO site aggregator site for the big city I live in so that hosts do not pay the 15% commission (win/win for guests/hosts), and was wondering what kind of negatives any of you may see as far as convincing new hosts to join the site and what kind of features I may not be able to provide since I don’t plan on making money off the hosts (plan is to make money off advertising things to do in the city).
Airbnb states that with them, you get their support which I won’t be able to provide if I am not charging anything to the hosts and making small margins off the experience referrals, but could possibly add support to hosts/guests if the hosts gave me 3% of the pie?
Airbnb also states you get their insurance policy, but we all know that’s a joke.
I think I could show the legitimacy of the hosts by pulling their Airbnb/VRBO reviews and averaging them, but that may be against Airbnb/VRBO T.O.S.? So, that could be the only downside or kink in this plan.
Any suggestions are appreciated.
I like the idea, but seems harder to build let alone monetize, and the technology that might automate practical use is expensive not to mention PPC to Google or however you are “marketing for traffic”. You are competing with really massive players on their turf.
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We have build the software platform that you need for this project.
What you want to start is called a DMO. (Destination Marketing Organization)
These can be private visitor information websites, or non-profit organizations funded by city/state/regional government, etc.
LocalOTA connects inventory and pricing from hotels, STRs, motels, lodges, hostels, bnbs, etc, into a “search and book” system. We expedite setup by importing airbnb listings or booking.c rooms into the system.
Basically we create a “Local OTA”, but all bookings are actually direct bookings. There is no overhead to the org as hosts/guests deal directly and hosts control the payments. No middleman like extractive OTAs. We have all the features that airbnb has, like 2-way reviews, request/instant book, host/guest chat, and more.
Then we help by connecting your inventory to google hotel/str search. This alone gives you a nice traffic boost.
The cost is around 3-5% to provide the service. But it depends on a few factors like scale of the org and how its funded.
Sorry I never saw this post and I now see it is one year ago. How has your project progressed?
Check out a real life example:
Big Bear Lake Visitor Bureau
