A few weeks ago I launched a survey among Spanish property managers asking the % of bookings they had for Airbnb vs Booking.
It came out much higher % for Booking than the Spanish market share would reveal. Of the 50 property managers who responded, almost half had over 80% of bookings through Booking!
I was surprised because my impression is that the shares should be around 60% Booking and 40% Airbnb. I speak in very general terms, only apartments, only Spain, and without considering other channels. I generalize a lot to make simple the reflection I share.
I did not find recent public figures that confirm or disprove this, so I rely on ListingOK's internal data, which coincide with what is usually commented in the sector. If anyone has accurate information, I'd be grateful if you could share it! 🙏
The funny thing is that, in conversations with managers and owners, I always hear a greater liking towards Airbnb (for different reasons that exceed the purpose of this post).
That's why I was expecting something closer to 50% / 50%. I expected a graph like the one on the left, and the one on the right came out.
Like any human who encounters something they don't understand, I made up a theory that would reassure me and bring order to the confusion. And it is this: many managers are not aware that they are renting cheaper on Booking than on Airbnb. Or, put another way, they are not concerned about having lower rates on Booking.com.
This hypothesis has gained even more traction recently. We started working with a large client who had just 8% of bookings through Airbnb. The first thing we did was to match the prices on Airbnb (adjusting the markup). Without touching anything on Booking the result is that a few weeks later more than 30% of the bookings come through Airbnb and I suspect it will reach 35%.
(The type of property they have is "very Booking" so not reaching 40% will not invalidate my impression that Airbnb should be around 40% nationally.).
So why does all this matter?
It matters because having lower rates in one channel over another means you are billing significantly less than you should be.
If there is a strategy behind prioritizing one channel over another, this may be tolerable. But if there is no desired preference and the distribution of our bookings between Airbnb and Booking do not resemble market share, you are losing money.
I aim to do another post to explain why this is so.
I’ll wrap up this post with a clue as to why this happens: many property managers, even after applying a higher markup on Booking.com compared to Airbnb, are unaware of the real impact of discounts, promotions and Genius initiatives Booking.com constantly introduces.
If a property manager has a heavily skewed distribution of bookings toward Booking.com, I recommend taking a few minutes to compare the final price that a registered user sees on each platform for the same property and dates.
If the difference is significant, the realization may be unpleasant: they’ve been losing revenue without realizing it.
But the good news is that fixing it is simple—by adjusting prices to maintain parity across channels, revenues will improve immediately. 🚀
Disclaimer: As I mentioned before, this is a simplified analysis, intended in general terms and applied to a large number of properties.
