Posted on April 4, 2022

Following the news that OTA Insight has acquired Transparent, a market-leading provider of data and business intelligence for the rapidly growing vacation rental industry, there are clear signs that the hospitality landscape has shifted.

For consumers, the distinction between hotels and short-term rental accommodation may be apparent, but for the hotel and vacation rental sectors, these lines are becoming a lot more blurred.

Historical hospitality business models have had to evolve, as have the industries that support them. As the sector transitions through its greatest reckoning, and new trends in the hospitality industry begin to emerge, the convergence of short-term rentals and hotel accommodation looks set to stay.

Adapting through the pandemic

Consumer demand for short-term vacation rentals has been steadily rising since their inception into the hospitality sector and this has now been accelerated by the pandemic. Consumers felt that short-term rentals provided a safer way to travel. 

With fewer touch points, less traffic, limited contact, and no crowds, there was considerably less opportunity to contract Covid within the confines of a short-term rental property. Work from home mandates, and online schooling meant that people could travel for longer periods, leading to a rise in business leisure travel, or bleisure, as it has become known. 

With more freedom and more flexibility in the workplace expected to be one of the lasting by-products of the pandemic, bleisure travel is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. But what does this mean for hotels, and in particular those who have traditionally relied on business travel as one of their biggest performance drivers?

Short-term rental strategies are now also focused on competing with hotels for corporate business. There is growing short-term rental demand for properties that are professionally run, with hotel-like standards. The pandemic has shown that short-term rental businesses are beginning to standardise their services and operations to mirror that of hotels. 

Hotels, too, are seeing an opportunity to tap into this market by investing in properties and apartments that can provide their level of service within the framework of rentals; adopting them into their brand as aparthotels. We’ve seen more and more hotels begin to explore the short-term rental arena, by introducing extended-stay packages, as they look to provide a home-away-from-home experience.

We know that the post-pandemic traveller is looking for more experiential, long-stay options, and seeks value in home-away-from-home accommodation options. While safety might have been at the forefront in the minds of most travellers during the peak of the pandemic, weight is now shifting towards better experiential value, centred around personal touches, service and interaction

Personal touches, synonymous with the short-term rental space, mean that hotels are having to look at ways to tailor their service offering. Concierge services, for example, are providing much more of a personalised 'host' experience, while amenities have also been enhanced to cater to the working traveller. Property managers of vacation rentals are looking more and more towards adopting similar services, structure and commercial strategies as hotels. This blend of hotel and vacation rentals means that traditional comp sets have shifted.

Original Post: https://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article120215.html