Hoteliers seek alternatives to the growth of alternative accommodation

That alternative accommodation has come to stay and there are no doubts, month after month different studies report that it is a segment that does not stop growing. For this reason, both hotel chains and OTAs have had to adapt to avoid losing ground.
Booking.com has recently presented the statistics of recent years. In them, it claims to have hosted more than 3,000 million customers since 2007, of which 750 million did so in alternative accommodation such as houses or apartments.
During the same period, more than 400 cities worldwide have hosted 1 million Booking.com clients each, and 29 of those cities have received more than 10 million customers.
Pioneers in the alternative accommodation sector, Booking.com offered on its platform the first apartment in 2000, the first mountain chalet in 2005, the first hotel ship in 2006 and the first riad in August 2007. Today, offers travelers more than 28 million lodging options in 148,000 destinations in more than 220 countries and territories around the world.

More and more accommodation options
The increasing demand on the part of the travelers of other types of lodging also became patent east year in the Guest Review Awards of Booking.com, since 73% of the establishments that were made with this prize were houses, apartments and other lodgings unique as boats, igloos or rural houses.
For the second year in a row, the apartments were the best rated accommodation type, unseating the hotels again. They represented more than a third (36% to be exact) of the award-winning accommodations around the world. Also for the second consecutive year in 2018 four of the five winning accommodation belonged to alternative options: apartments (269,649), hotels (148,913), inns (78,574), bed and breakfasts (66,697) and holiday homes (56,303).

Airbnb few hours ago released the news of collaboration with the real estate developer in New York RXR, through which enabled luxury homes to rent them as if they were hotel rooms.
Marriott's response has not been long in coming. The hotel giant has announced the launch of a service similar to Airbnb, called Homes & Villas by Marriott International, which also focuses on luxury properties.
The Marriott service will offer around 2,000 premium and luxury homes in more than 100 cities around the world. The management of these apartments will be carried out by external companies and will be equipped with Wi-Fi and quality amenities, such as bed linen and professional cleaning after each stay.
"The launch of Homes & Villas by Marriott International reflects our continued commitment to innovation as consumers' needs change," Stephanie Linnartz, the chain's commercial director, said in a statement.

Clear competition with Airbnb Plus
Judging by the type of properties that hosts this platform, the new service competes directly with Marriott Plus Airbnb service, which offers similar properties for rent in some such luxurious places like the Amalfi Coast in Italy.
Currently, Marriott operates 7,000 properties, including W Hotels, the Ritz-Carlton and Courtyard brands. It has locations in 130 countries and offers more than one million rooms. For its part, Airbnb hosts more than 6 million listings in more than 190 countries and 81,000 cities on its platform.
For its part, Marriott already has a small-scale housing exchange program, which operates in four European cities: London, Paris, Rome and Lisbon.
The reaction to this new release by Marriott was not long in coming. The CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, welcomes the hotel giant to the rental sector.