Australia's flag carrier airline Qantas and the popular online accommodation portal Airbnb recently went into partnership to reward its respective customers. Frequent flyer members can now earn Qantas points whenever they book their accommodation through Airbnb.
As reported by Financial Review, this team-up, however, is gaining massive criticisms by traditional hotel partners whose businesses are most affected by this agreement. These hotels had solid alliances with various airlines, Qantas including, in which hotel customers can also earn travel points to a particular airline when they book their room accommodation to them, a similar agreement recently entered by Airbnb to Qantas. As Telegraph notes of Airbnb's growing popularity as an alternative to the expensive traditional hotel reservations, this partnership serves as a warning for a much tougher competition when Airbnb starts spreading this kind of agreement to other huge airlines as well.
Much like the comparison of taxis versus Uber, the argument plays around the concept of how much change the consumers are willing to adapt and how different are the traditional hotels to that of what Airbnb offers. Issues like safety and unfair bypassing of regulatory loopholes are some of the issues raised against this type of modern accommodation, the consumers on the other hand have nothing but good words and praises to Airbnb.
It's a tough thing to consider how much of a good news does this partnership bring. In some way, the consumers, specially the frequent flyer/premium members, benefit on a more comprehensive options and added rewards system. Behind those however, is the probable decline of traditional hotels, specially the small players, which is also a niche industry on their own.
Forbes also reports of Airbnb's plan of expansion to 190 more countries, which could also mean that Airline partnerships like this highly probable. What this could mean in the future is uncertain, but one thing remains true, there are two sides in every coin.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
