Booking.com vs Airbnb vs TripAdvisor: Comparison And Difference -

(Newswire.net — August 13, 2020) — The accommodation segment of the travel industry is dominated by the three giants, Booking.com, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor. When it comes to booking vacation rentals, hotels, apartments, villas, etc, travelers turn to these websites to complete their bookings. These travel sites are the most trusted and downloaded sites amongst all other similar websites. The industry that was once dominated by the hotel chains and airline giants has now been overpowered by these leading OTAs.

However, each of these travel booking websites have their own pros and cons and are different from each other. So, to help you decide which of these OTAs you should choose to make your travel bookings, we have compared Booking.com, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor.

Booking.com

Booking.com is a subsidiary of Booking Holdings and is headquartered in Amsterdam. It is a leading online travel agency that offers about 28 million accommodation listings worldwide including over 6.2 million listings of homes, unique places, and apartments. Booking Holding generated a revenue of $15.07 billion in 2019.

Booking.com is a specialist when it comes to renting hotel rooms all over the world. Considering the market size and revenue, Booking.com outperforms Airbnb and TripAdvisor. However, Vacation Rental owners have only recently started to consider Booking.com for their listings. Leading sites such as Agoda and cTrip are affiliate partners with Booking.com. These days, many business people are investing in the idea of developing their own Hotel booking apps.

Business model of Booking.com

Booking.com has a different business model when compared to Airbnb and TripAdvisor. It’s services are focused on pleasing guests and enabling them to make instant bookings from a wide variety of accommodations. The business model is a multi-dimensional market which includes property providers and renters.

The property providers collect the booking amount and pay a commission of 12%-15% to Booking.com. It also provides an easy cancellation for guests. However, unlike other models, Booking.com does not provide information about guests until after they have booked. This poses a challenge for vacation rental owners in assessing risky guests as they cannot reject the booking without a ranking penalty.

Airbnb

Airbnb offers a community-based platform to connect property owners and guests. The platform promotes a sharing economy as it allows hosts to list their homes and guests to rent local homes. The online travel agency was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Airbnb offers more than 7 million accommodations in over 220 countries and have over 150 million users that use the platform. Airbnb is valued at $38 billion which is expected to fall due to the pandemic.

Airbnb is loved by property owners as it offers an easy property listing and management. Most of the properties offered by Airbnb are located in urban areas, however, as more vacation rental owners are joining the shared community, the scenario is changing. Airbnb allows hosts to rate guests to enable other owners to make an informed decision before offering their accommodation to that guest. It provides an incentive and penalties to manage the owners’ behavior through instant bookings by guests, no cancellations, guest reviews, etc.

Business model of Airbnb

Airbnb thrives on its business model as the largest accommodation provider worldwide that doesn’t own any property. The business model of Airbnb consists of property owners and guests that benefit from the platform. While the property owners earn extra income by listing their property on AIrbnb, the guests enjoy private living spaces and an authentic experience. Airbnb charges a commission of 3% – 5% from the accommodation owners and 0% – 20% booking fee from the guests, depending on the size of the booking.

The service fee paid by the guests reduces with the increase in the booking cost. It is a non-refundable fee that includes cleaning, reservation, occupancy, VAT, currency exchanges, extra guests, and service fee. Moreover, Airbnb also charges a 20% service fee from hosts who provide experiential stays.

TripAdvisor

Headquartered in Massachusetts, United States, TripAdvisor is an online travel agency that allows users to book their travel, compare prices, and offers services for accommodation, destinations, restaurants, experiences and travel activities. The platform is recognized worldwide for enabling users to leave reviews on destinations, restaurants, or accommodations that other users can view.

It provides over 702 million reviews of leading hotels, and lists over 7 million locations including hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions. TripAdvisor is the biggest online travel advisor that has 490 million active users every month, generating a revenue of $1.62 billion worldwide. Despite all these stats, TripAdvisor has a low conversion rate for bookings. The vacation rentals are managed by a subsidiary of TripAdvisor, Flipkey.

Apart from Hotel apps, Businesses are also investing in Flights apps, you can check for Best Flight booking app development company on clutch.

Business model of TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor’s business model is based on matching the demand of guests with the supply of accommodations and other travel experiences by travel partners. Therefore, the two key partners of TripAdvisor are travel partners and travelers. The revenue model for vacation rentals managed by Flipkey is similar to that of Airbnb. It uses the same commission and booking fee strategy, as well as the same payment process, booking process, and review process.

The main revenue mode used by the travel website is the advertising model. TripAdvisor collects commissions from travel partners on a CPC and CPM basis on matching demand and supply. The hotels pay commission to TripAdvisor on a cost-per-click basis, while the hotel suppliers, cruises suppliers, and air travel suppliers pay as per the cost-per-mile basis.