Hotel chains are losing valuable customers to Airbnb
Airbnb is taking hotel chains’ most valued customers by converting loyalty programme members into users. A total of 36% of travellers who use hotel loyalty programmes have used Airbnb for bookings, compared to the 15% of non-loyalty members. Also, 51% of guests travelling over 11 times per year have used the service in comparison to 27% of non-members travelling the same amount. Airbnb’s latest feature, air travel booking feature Flights, will likely boost its appeal to further hotel travellers in the near future.
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Popular home-sharing site Airbnb is eating away at hotel chains' market share, and the company is even stealing their core customers by converting loyalty program members to Airbnb users, reports Quartz.

This is yet another sign of Airbnb's success in commanding the travel space, as it rolls out additional offerings in order to keep users engaged with the platform beyond one-off bookings.

Airbnb is stealing hotel chains' most valuable customers:

Notably, loyalty program members are more likely than nonmembers to try Airbnb — 36% of travelers enrolled in a hotel chain loyalty program have used Airbnb, compared with 15% of travelers not in a loyalty program.

This extends across frequency of travel, as well — 51% of hotel loyalty guests who travel more than 11 times per year have tried Airbnb. This is compared with just 27% of nonmembers who travel the same amount in a year.

Competitors will have to find new ways to stave off Airbnb's threat. The home-sharing site has already become a powerhouse in the online travel space, with its cemented domination of hotels, bed and breakfasts, and other vacation rentals.

In addition, the company's new air travel booking project Flights, coupled with an upcoming capital injection, will likely enable Airbnb to expand its offerings around the globe to onboard even more travelers. As Airbnb continually folds in new travel offerings, it could compete more directly with OTAs for bookings, increasing its hold on the travel industry and extending its reach firmly beyond room and board.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on new e-commerce strategies that looks at some of the top trends affecting retailers at each stage of the purchase funnel and how they're responding to those shifts.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Within digital, consumers are spreading out their retail purchasing across channels, forcing retailers to spread out their online marketing budgets. Paid search, affiliate marketing, and email all increased their share of e-commerce referrals last year, according to Custora.

Paid search especially stood out as a major source of spending by retailers. Search ad spending grew 18% YoY in Q4 2015, according to IgnitionOne.

Mobile continues to drive the most sales growth for retailers, but sales still aren't keeping up with retail traffic. IBM found that smartphone traffic beat both tablet and desktop, making up 53% of all online traffic. But mobile still only accounted for 29% of all online sales.

Retailers only have themselves to blame for underperformance on mobile, as many still aren't using best practices for mobile websites and apps. Only 60% of the top 100 global retailers currently have a dedicated mobile website, according to The Search Agency.

The increase in online shopping has put stress on the shipping and logistics industry. The number of UPS ground packages delivered on time during the holidays fell from 97% in 2014 to 91% in 2015, according to ShipMatrix.

Retailers are beginning to explore alternative shipping options. Earlier this year Gilt Groupe switched its primary ground shipper from UPS to Newgistics.

Retailers that can't afford to invest in alternative shipping options are offering consumers more fulfillment options using what many of them do have — brick-and-mortar stores. Buying online and picking up in-store, also called click and collect, made up about 30% of e-commerce sales at Sam's Club in 2015.

In full, the report:

Looks at how retailers are shifting their ad spending and marketing efforts to keep up with online retail behavior

Identifies which channels are top performers for referral traffic and new opportunities for reaching consumers

Analyzes how retailers are responding to the rise of mobile purchasing and where they're falling short

Examines the evolving delivery landscape and the aggressive moves retailers are making to become their own shipping carriers

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