Airbnb, Google and Agoda hint at upcoming search and fintech functions

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Airbnb needs to provide more information to guests about hosts, and making them more searchable would be an improvement. However, the fear is that such information will make it easier for guests to book directly with hosts and bypass Airbnb.

Shift

Online travel this week

Top managers at Airbnb, google travel, and Agoda separately hinted in recent days about upcoming features on the companies’ wish lists.

They were about search and “fintech”.

Airbnb may add more host information

Airbnb Chairman and CEO Brian Chesky said at the Skift Global Forum last week that enabling guests to find out additional information about the host, whether that person is a musician or has other appealing qualities, could be of great interest.

“It’s a group of people who don’t care a ton about who the host is, and where the host might be a property management company, and who they are doesn’t really matter,” Chesky said. “But there is probably a much larger group of people who want to live in a real house. They care about who the person is.”

Airbnb recently expanded the categories guests can use to search for properties, including everything from lakefront homes to A-frames and surf homes, so adding another way to find host information could be attractive.

The company’s property listings already provide profiles for hosts, including how many reviews their property has, when they joined Airbnb, whether they’re a Superhost, and brief descriptions. But Airbnb has been criticized for not identifying whether the seemingly individual host may actually be working for a corporate property manager, for example.

“What if you could live with a musician, and you could see the structured data about who this person is?” Chesky said. “So I think the key is to match people based on their personality traits, not just the traits.”

One factor weighing against more Airbnb transparency about hosts is that the company fears that more information about hosts could lead to more guests booking directly with hosts, bypassing Airbnb.

Google may return a flight price guarantee

What can be loosely called “fintech” is getting hotter at the moment in travel, and beyond. It ranges from Booking.com’s new payment systems and Grab’s lending and asset management services to Jumpers functions for freezing flight prices and hotel prices.

Richard Holden, Google Travel’s vice president of product management, told the audience at the Skift Global Forum on Sept. 20 that the company is considering bringing back a flight price guarantee that it tested in 2019 but abandoned during the pandemic.

“It’s something we’re looking at trying to innovate in the next year or so, which I think is an interesting opportunity,” Holden said. “Consumers really loved it when we experimented with it before. And we work a lot with what I would call insight, price insight both on the hotel side and on the flight side. But I wouldn’t say that there’s anything I would consider fintech-specific that we’re announcing at this point.”

Holden appears to distinguish between fintech services related to banking or investment, and insurance-like features in travel such as price guarantees.

This is how Holden described an early iteration of the feature in 2019:

“When we predict that the price will not drop for selected itineraries booked between 13 August and 2 September, we guarantee that the price will not drop and we will refund you the difference if it does. We monitor the price for you, and if the price drops at any time before departure, we’ll send you an email letting you know when your flight takes off – so there’s no work for you. This feature is available for select itineraries originating in the United States with domestic or international destinations.”

Agoda launches a price freeze and cancellation insurance

Agoda CEO Omri Morgenshtern told TTG Asia that the Booking Holdings brand plans to introduce price freeze and cancellation insurance features in 2023.

This could come from a partnership with Hopper, although none has been announced. Agoda sister company Kayaking already have a Hopper partnership.

In short

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