This summer we were fortunate enough to visit one of my favourite cities, Paris, on two separate occasions. In June we went for a holiday in Champagne and stayed in a hotel in Paris for two nights and in August we stayed in an Airbnb flat in for just over a week.
The contrast between the two experiences made me think of how the airline industry was before “no frills”, low-cost airlines came around. The level of service even at a sub standard hotel is almost ridiculous. A member of staff sits in the lobby 24/7, they make your bed and clean your room every morning and if you dump your towels on the floor, you’ll get fresh ones the next day. And the tucking. Lots of tucking. I’m with George Costanza on the whole tucking business. Put me down for a non-tuck, please.
At Airbnb we paid roughly same amount per night to stay in an entire apartment with two bedrooms and lots of toys for our daughter as we paid for a tiny hotel room in the same neighbourhood. And if you’ve stayed with a two year old in a hotel room, you’ll know which one I preferred.
Airbnb isn’t just a posterchild for the new “sharing economy”. It is also serving demand for “no frills” accommodation that the hotel industry hasn’t really embraced to the same extent as the airline industry. I wonder why the hotel industry hasn’t also been disrupted by a low-cost, no-frills offering other than Airbnb.
