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Airbnb is driving billions of dollars in sales at local establishments
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Popular home-sharing site Airbnb is contributing to a significant boost in sales at local restaurants, reports Bloomberg. In fact, 42% of guests spend money at establishments in the neighborhood they're staying in, which translates to $4.5 billion for restaurants around the world. This pushes Airbnb further into the local services space, as well as serves as a boon for restaurants that have not yet jumped into the digital arena.
One of the biggest differentiators between Airbnb and traditional hotels is the number of services and local knowledge that hotel guests receive from hotel staff and concierges.
In August, Airbnb rolled out its Guidebooks tool, which lets hosts share information about local businesses and restaurants. This pits the company more directly against the hotel industry by connecting travelers with their surroundings via local residents and third-party platforms. This is a significant problem for traditional hotels, as Airbnb is continually stealing market share from them.
Guidebooks is purely driven by reviews from hosts, but restaurants can use them to their advantage by highlighting the reviews in their establishment via posters or window stickers. This could prove particularly useful for restaurants that have a limited online presence thanks to Airbnb's digital users. Airbnb's 1.5 million available listings around the world, as well as its 60 million users, provide smaller businesses with a significant opportunity to leverage the home-sharing site's popular reputation to lift sales and raise visibility.
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