The consumer choose in the free market. Recently, there was an article bashing Airbnb stealing business of budget hotels in Malaysia. Yes, the few business operators are very angry because there were fewer guests in their hotel. The summary of the article is the expenses of tax, employee salary and utilities bill are higher compared to setting up a room with Airbnb.
It was absurd to say Grab and Uber took all the taxi business in this beloved country. The same goes to Airbnb and the hotel industry. I prefer the newspaper or the complainant to use more formal word from "stealing" to "slowing down". I believe there are lots of Malaysian and tourists love to stay at budget hotel due to strategic location ?
It is not a rocket science the accommodation demand is pretty much upward unless there would be an outbreak anytime soon even that is not stopping the ever-growing demand.. Airbnb might have solved the ordinary people's unused inventory. Perhaps, Airbnb is just taking it deserved market share.
Airbnb is such a decent app to try out ! There are lots of possibility in it. I guess the right thing to do with it is exploring new territory and keep it under budget. I never visited Ipoh before, so I thought to myself it open up a chance to use Airbnb.
I could just find any budget hotels located at Ipoh but, the walk-in rate is vary and it could be fully booked. Budget hotels were sometimes not listed in major travel website due to it ratings. Hotel always synonymous with luxury room for family and group.
The truth is for tourism industry in the world particularly Malaysia, the agency namely booking.com or expedia get special room rates for group tour. Anyone book with them always come in a package like "more than one person". The main point are what if I am travelling solo and what if I like walk-in ?
The industry has been favoring group tour since the beginning. It is like you are buying bulk, I will see you cheaper. If you just buy one of those, you are gonna get rip-off price. Those are the standard operation procedure for 4 stars and 5 stars rating hotel.
Then somehow a solution to those "YOLO" (
you only live once) travelers that would be homestay or budget hotel. To be honest, most of them do not really offer breakfast and not listed widely on Internet.
Beside luxury resort, high rating hotels and budget hotels, we could choose a much more simple, transparent and fun way engage our accommodation needs in the year 2017. Airbnb does not charge us more than it should and the rate determined by the host. Furthermore, we get the chance to engage a conversation with the host rather than in a position of being a guest getting a conversation with an associate with company code.
Most of us could utilize Airbnb app as if our core purpose is to spend quality time connecting with the local and learning their culture rather than accepting all the unnecessary service provided by the hotel such as breakfast and room service. We get the chance to get our breakfast at nearest restaurant and wash our own cloth with local detergent rather than expensive laundry service from the hotels.
If you are planning on using Airbnb, a quick reminder we might need to bring our toothbrush and toothpaste.
You might ask question like "How to pay to the host through Airbnb" ? A suggestion to all Malaysian who wanted to try Airbnb is using the available payment method which is Paypal.
I am planning to use Airbnb as much as I can in the future of my endeavor on next unexplored territory in Malaysia. For instance, Melaka and Sarawak.
You could try sign up and earn travel credit too ! Here is the link >>
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