Airbnb for business travellers: more wifi, fewer hosts in towels

Whether travelling for business or pleasure, Tad Milbourn, chief executive of US technology start-up Payable, stays at an Airbnb property whenever possible.

“It’s absolutely the coolest, being in someone’s house as opposed to a hotel,” he said. “And it’s superior, from the price, experience and novelty standpoint.”

Because Payable helps clients manage payments, Milbourn is particularly attuned to the services Airbnb has developed for business travellers, and he encourages his two employees who travel to use Airbnb and its services, too. These include the ability to track employees’ whereabouts and spending and to charge expenses to a corporate credit card.

Milbourn is one of many business travellers now choosing Airbnb or other home-sharing services, like HomeAway, over conventional hotels.

A report issued last month by Concur, a travel and expense-management company, found that the number of nights that its 42 million business travel customers spent in home-sharing accommodations rose more than 50 per cent from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of this year.

Agreements

Airbnb is actively cultivating this clientele, having recently reached agreements with three big business travel management companies in the United States: American Express Global Business Travel, BCD Travel and Carlson Wagonlit Travel.

Under these agreements, Airbnb will send data on travellers’ expenditures and itineraries to the travel management companies, which in turn will share the information with the travellers’ employers, their clients. The employers can then use this data to monitor employees’ spending and travel and to track them down, as needed, if there is an emergency.

But some business travellers who have used Airbnb, especially those whose bosses booked the accommodations for them, warn that bad surprises can sometimes await.

Alexa Pothier, a Boston-based consultant software company, who has used Airbnb occasionally during holidays with generally positive results, had a different outcome on a business trip in 2014 when she stayed at a one-bedroom apartment in the Shoreditch neighbourhood of London.

The host owned a small business in a shopfront on the ground floor, which Pothier had to walk through to reach the stairs to the apartment. Although the apartment had a large living space, where Pothier said she could work comfortably, she was startled by a mouse that “early on scampered very quickly across the couch”.

And the bedroom window overlooked a noisy street, which forced her to use earplugs that the host had left in a bowl next to the bed.

When Katie Gilligan travelled to London last year on business, her boss put her up for a week each at two apartments booked through Airbnb.

The second apartment, in the King’s Cross neighbourhood, was owned by a woman who shared the living space and would not let Gilligan use the water or flush the toilet after 8pm. The host also walked around wearing only a towel, Gilligan said, “talking to me about her life experience and about aliens coming down and probing people”.

Business travel-ready

All the more reason, perhaps, to use Airbnb’s business travel services that include “business travel-ready” listings – accommodations geared toward business travellers’ specific needs.

To qualify, a lodging must meet various criteria, including high customer ratings; 24-hour check-in; accommodations that are an entire home or apartment, not shared with the owner; the availability of wifi and a laptop-friendly workspace; and an iron, a hair dryer and other amenities.

Chip Conley, head of global hospitality and strategy for Airbnb, said that more than 70,000 companies had made bookings through Airbnb for Business, a programme introduced last year that features listings and travel-management tools.

Some professionals in the business travel industry acknowledge the potential benefits of using services such as Airbnb, and see some of the drawbacks.

Airbnb's affordable offerings could help budget-conscious attendees of conventions and meetings, Deborah Sexton, president and chief executive of the Professional Convention Management Association, said. Home-sharing accommodations can also offer an attractive alternative when hotel rooms are sold out, she said.

Depending on its location, an Airbnb property might not be the most convenient option for a business traveller, particularly someone attending a conference or convention, Sexton said.

"One of the biggest perks of a host hotel is its central location," she said. "For attendees who stay at Airbnb properties in different neighbourhoods, getting to an early-morning conference or attending a late-night evening reception may be more difficult." – (New York Times)