Holiday Cottage TV advertising disasters

[charles cawley]

Quite a bit is going on in the world of listing sites turned agencies, legacy booking agencies and go-it-alone holiday let and cottage owners.

AirBnB continues to disrupt the market with vast advertising spend and the hope it might turn a profit in 2020. It has monopolist dreams... but they are flawed in at least two respects.

AirBnB has just launched a high quality separate service to look after top hotels and such like. It has discovered a mega brand is not so clever after all and is finding out Wyndham Worldwide with its plethora of brands is not so 'fuddy-duddy' and backward as its thrusting young achingly trendy founders thought. http://www.independent.co.uk/Business/i ... 02061.html

Another aspect is also interesting. The way the internet relates to legacy media advertising is organic. The consequences for large operations are not welcome but smaller ones have benefited. An article about this is here: http://www.holidayletsforsale.com/category/blog-post/

Meanwhile, also in the article, the quality of recent advertisements from Home Away and AirBnB has been catastrophic:


'Although very welcome, the ads are staggeringly incompetent in-house efforts. If an agency is involved, they need whipping. AirBnB screened a series of TV ads over several weeks in April and May featuring a happy family wrecking a kitchen doing home cooking. It could only have been created by a bunch of men... I am a bloke but even I can see the message this was giving to owners and guests. For owners, the message was: 'if you join AirBnB, your place will be trashed'. For Guests, the message to Mum was: 'don't dream you will have a restful holiday. It will be chaos as usual plus a bit more and, guess who will be working overtime to clear up the mess? Some holiday.

The HomeAway ad, which has run for several weeks, is close to an obscenity. 'Book the whole house' goes the theme and you will not even have to share it with a smelly owner who can't be bothered to dress properly and, most likely, frightens the children. Where are these people coming from? In the UK market, the idea of renting a holiday cottage to share it with an owner is off the wall. If it does happen, I have never come across it and I can be sure that such an arrangement would be a commercial disaster. It is an ugly, inappropriate, incompetent ad, again, it seems created by an in-house team perhaps aimed at the US market? I suspect, just like Euro Ads, the voices have been changed to UK accents but the ad, itself, is generic US.'


These are interesting times.

[Zur Alten Weinkelter]

Here in germany they are running the same tv ads ( i have both german & uk channels) homeaway ( changed to fewo direkt ) ABB with a german narator etc... then you add on booking.com & their cancel when you like attitude dont worry about the hotel/property owner who has blocked their calender aranged housekeeping factured in their budget only because some p**** has decided to buy the wife/partner a dog !!!

[farley]

Interesting times indeed Charles.
We don't see much TV advertising so it's very useful to be brought up to speed. Thank you.

[petitbois]

we can still view UK TV here in SWFrance & am also horrified by the ads....have also seen the airbb ad on French TV which shows the bdotcom ads too - goes a long way to explain the changing attitude of guests towards us as hosts. Finding that the French are more likely to research - virtually all our French B&B bookings are now taken by phone with the guest having our bdotcom & air pages open on their device & wanting a deal between the 2 so neither of us pays commission. In past years have paid out around 2000euros/yr to bdotcom in commission, for our bookings this year via the site just 300euros.... OK not a great year for us, but getting phone calls most days now from French enquirers - giving them a cheaper rate, but still better off than via bdotcom. Here we are allowed to publish a cheaper rate on our own websites - a subject much publicised on French media

[charles cawley]

I agree about the attitude towards owners. Some guests consider it a challenge, almost a sport, to see how low they can crush rents down to. Once on holiday, a few, still mercifully very few, will systematically snag and, when going home, are not unknown to use the threat of bad reviews to insist on refunds. They think they smell weakness and follow through.

Fortunately, we find our guests do not do this. But we did have an unfortunate experience using a listing site- now turned poor service agency- which generated more phone calls and difficulties for the one test cottage than for the 60 or so we had with us at the time. It was utterly astonishing.

If big booking agencies act badly towards owners, is it any surprise that some guests follow suit? This wrecks things for the vast majority of sound, trusting top quality guests and corrodes the key aspect of holiday letting which is hospitality. In many cases, owners put hospitality ahead of squeezing profit- this is a tradition and attitude some big agencies trample on at their peril.

Meanwhile, go it alone owners pay for all this, as much as those who work with serious booking agencies.

[COYS]

Excellent points Charles.
I too sat open mouthed when watching these latest ads - the ABB one in particular reinforced my belief that if this is deemed acceptable behaviour their core users would not likely be my ideal demographic. I'd question whether it would be anybody elses either. Unless wrecking someone elses property is oh so trendy now as well.

The HA one is no better, a highly offensive snipe at market rivals dressed up as an ad. There is more than an undercurrent of ethnic prejudice involved with the suggestion that holiday homeowners across the pond are creepy, underdressed child catchers.

Who on earth writes this dross or deems it appropriate? I think you are bang on the money Charles that it must be US focussed.
One can only hope that the level of competence has sunk as low as it can get. If not, the future as seen through the eyes of USmegacorps looks increasingly unstable.

"In many cases, owners put hospitality ahead of squeezing profit- this is a tradition and attitude some big agencies trample on at their peril."
Couldn't have put it better myself Charles.

[waterwitch]

Both ads are astonishing examples of how to get it wrong. And it's our money that they are wasting big time on this.

[russellt]

Excellent points Charles.
I too sat open mouthed when watching these latest ads

+1

the destruction of the kitchen, as an advert, was astonishing!

Unfortunately, for now, they have mass-market demand appeal on their side. So the supply side will continue to meekly follow the money, and allow their assets to be abused.

[charles cawley]

The smelly owner advertisement as published by Home Away: https://www.youtube.com/user/homeawayvacation

They don't have a clue. It smears the entire sector and the vast majority of owners.

Here's a bit of the AirBnB ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xBosDgw30M

[russellt]

they are flawed in at least two respects.

And the likely tie-up with Trooly makes me feel decidedly queasy.

I wonder how far the definition of "undesirable past behaviors" will stretch.

[charles cawley]

AirBnB appears to be much enamoured with the Sun Tzu view that the key is to annihilate competition as a priority aiming for quasi-monopoly dominance.

This is miles away from the old fashioned idea that focusing on value and quality gets results. The Japanese, in boom times, even saw eight or so FLT manufacturers rescue one about to go under on the principle of collective support focused on quality and value and not necessarily on dominance for its own sake.

The notion of automated blacklisting is creepy and potentially dangerous. If the machine gets the wrong end of the stick, businesses and entire lives could be wrecked. 'The computer say no.' Automated justice is an oxymoron.

[russellt]

The notion of automated blacklisting is creepy and potentially dangerous.

Trouble is, an owner may not realise until the damage is done.

[COYS]

they are flawed in at least two respects.

And the likely tie-up with Trooly makes me feel decidedly queasy.

I wonder how far the definition of "undesirable past behaviors" will stretch.

That makes for a grim read russellt & that fork in the road is just around the corner it seems.
Machine generated social engineering via algorithm ... how on earth did picking or providing holiday accommodation end up like this?

[Mouse]

It's becoming a scary world out there.

Regarding the American focus - I've always thought from the off that these companies look only to the American market. They have no understanding, and don't want to have it, of the European style of booking holidays. Nor of age group.....older people want to connect with Owners more I feel.
You only have to look at the filters on HA to see the lack of understanding.

It is now 'booking holiday accommodation by numbers' and enquirers are being cheated by not being able to see all relevant accommodation.

Mouse
x

[charles cawley]

To be fair, although not their greatest fan, Wyndham Worldwide with its plethora of niche brands is much more in tune with things... although the way it deals with owners and guests is not always 100%.

I know of some owners who have beaten them down to 20% +vat on commissions. Gone are the days of 25% or more plus Vat. They have moved with the times.

But the likes of AirBnB and HomeAway seem to have genuine listening problems or, perhaps, the arrogance of large corporations that they can force markets to behave as they want. Coca Cola discovered, years back, hippy style ads teaching the world to sing etc: were not as effective as bespoke regional marketing-- but even they cannot resist some global ads with their hideous Christmas red lorry traffic jam.

There is a growing anti-globalist feeling. Although globalism may not be wrong in certain fields, apparently trying to enforce a global culture puts too much stress on the word 'hubris' to permit its use.

This Trooly thing is radically creepy.