Lest you missed it Airbnb this week announced partnerships with American Express GBT, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and BCD Travel.
This means that the world's largest three TMCs will shortly be able to book Airbnb accommodation on behalf of their clients, offer the facility on their corporate self-booking tools and, crucially, offer integrated reporting. The traveller will still receive itinerary information and be able to communicate with the host but consumer enhancements such as user reviews will not be available.
The implementation will be quick.
American Express, for example, announced, "The first phase of this partnership will go live in the United States in the next few weeks, and expand to additional countries, including the UK, France and Germany, later this year."
Sharing economy suppliers undoubtedly get a higher proportion of media coverage than befits their market share of corporate bookings. Industry association studies suggest that corporate demand for sharing economy accommodation is well overstated. For example, a recent survey of frequent business travellers by AudienceNet on behalf of the Guild of Travel Management Companies in the UK found that just 2% wanted to stay in Airbnbs and similar 'sharing economy' properties compared with 75% who wanted to stay in chain hotels.
Barely more than a month ago Airbnb announced that the booker and the traveller no longer needed to be the same person. It has now moved into a much more significant position.
The benefits are palpable for managed travel programmes. Corporate travel managers and their TMCs are able to have all the data — from spend through to security — integrated within their existing systems so Airbnb bookings can be easily included in everything from spend analysis to traveller tracking. The back end will have more while the front end will remain user friendly and offer even more content.
Both Airbnb and the large TMCs clearly believe that although the sharing economy is a small part of corporate travel programmes today, it is growing and is potentially huge. Airbnb, for example, says that business travellers make 10% of its bookings and the company has been expanding its corporate offering through the creation of the Airbnb for Business sub-brand.
But unless we're about to enter a Golden Age of corporate travel growth, these accommodation bookings are likely to represent leakage from other suppliers, namely existing large multinational chains.
The repositioning is not surprising given some large hotels' recent initiatives to encourage direct bookings from business travellers.
Loyal large customers of hotel suppliers usually receive discounted rates in exchange for their loyalty and volume of bookings. The rate at Airbnb properties is not set by Airbnb so at first look it might seem that the feasible possibility of negotiation might be Airbnb's commission rate.
However, Airbnb also announced that it was entering a "preferred partnership" with American Express GBT. Such agreements normally mean a payment to the TMC in exchange for it prioritising bookings and achieving a pre-agreed volume of bookings.
If Airbnb is following this route with its new, large TMC partners, Marriott, Hilton, Accor and co all need to take notice.