Airbnb Customer Experience

Airbnb has established itself as a major player in the hospitality industry. A large part of that success has been due to Airbnb’s ability to provide an exceptional and unique experience to consumers. The “at home” feel and the ability to feel like a local are very attractive to a large number of travelers.

However, like every product, it can be improved. In particular, there are still many ways that Airbnb can improve the customer experience.

Although Airbnb is trying to design and curate a unique experience, in many consumers’ minds, they are being compared to hotels. In many parts of the world, Airbnb is still in direct competition with hotels for the hearts and minds of consumers.

There are many things that hotels get wrong, which is one of the reasons why Airbnb has been able to thrive. But customer experience is an area where the upscale hotels get it right.

Due to their ability to control the experience, hotels can ensure the highest quality for everything from safes to sheets. The very unique experiences that Airbnb provides make it difficult to provide this quality consistently.

In order to get around this, Airbnb can curate services to provide to hosts to pass along to consumers.

Airbnb can brand certain services that make it clear to consumers what they are getting. Associating the Airbnb brand with these services and offerings will also allow the user to associate those services with quality.

Some examples are Airbnb for key delivery. Airbnb for safes (to keep valuables). Airbnb for towels, etc…

If Airbnb doesn’t wish to tackle these additional services themselves, they can have a program that allows third party companies to become Airbnb certified (in the same vein as the Preferred Marketing Developer program with Facebook). These auxiliary services would be provided by these companies, and Airbnb would vet their quality to ensure that consumers are receiving quality service in line with their values.

High-end hotels also provide transportation and other services that make things exceedingly easy for customers. Airbnb can do something similar by designing an end to end experience by partnering with a larger ride-sharing company, or provide a service for hosts to connect with a local service.

This additional focus on an end to end experience would attract higher net worth and older clientele that have not yet become Airbnb guests. This could have a marked impact on revenues and growth.