Airbnb's rumored revenue drop and the battle between HITEC and The Hospitality Show

Did Airbnb's RevPAL really drop by half?

You may have seen the headlines claiming that Airbnb’s RevPAL is down by as much as 45-47% in cities such as Phoenix and Austin. But the data is all based on a tweet, and the original source AllTheRooms has yet to verify the veracity of the data. Jamie Lane attempted to match these results with data from AirDNA and found their revenues are only down 3.6%. 

Still, even 3.6% is a substantial drop, and vacation rental owners are all over the comments sharing anecdotes about tumbleweeds rolling in instead of guests. Let this be your reminder that anecdotal evidence can’t match hard numbers, and the hard numbers here have yet to be confirmed.

Airbnb reminds investors that their gross booking value rose 19% in the first quarter. Moreover, a dip should be expected this year since many people were eager to travel following the pandemic. Airbnb’s revenue seems unlikely to fall by nearly half so quickly without some kind of disaster that hits the rest of the industry.

Recommendation: Whether you have a hotel or a vacation rental, Akia is a good way to boost revenue by recouping OTA fees, processing payments, and offering early check-ins. Learn more. 

HITEC and THS battle for attendance. 

When two friends throw a party on the same night, what do you do? The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) and Questex created a dilemma when they debuted The Hospitality Show (THS) on June 27-29th… the same week as the HITEC conference. While THS sold out their 300 vendor spaces and boasted 3500 attendees in Las Vegas, HITEC in Toronto saw a big drop from last year, with only 4,500 compared to 6,000 in 2022. It’s easy math to wonder if the drop in attendance was due to companies opting to check out the new show instead.

From Generative AI to robots carrying out room service tasks, speakers at both HITEC and THS noted the need to rely on technology to bridge the gap between staffing challenges and guest expectations. For example, in the panel “The Demand Generation: Asking for Everything,” the president and CEO of Sonesta International Hotels Corp. referenced a property that used robots to serve small items to rooms.

While we do welcome our future robot overlords, we have our sights set on the near future when HITEC and THS won’t be at the same time. Next year THS will be in San Antonio in October, while HITEC will hop down to Charlotte the same last weekend in June.

Recommendation: There are better hospitality technologies than mecha-staff that you don’t even have to charge up at night. Speak with a specialist to learn how you can get started. 

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Stay Roanoke accelerates guest interaction.

Before switching to Akia, Stay Roanoke used a service that relied only on human operators to address guest inquiries, which proved less reliable and prone to errors and misinformation. 
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