Airbnb has really helped us [in the accommodation industry] in the sense that it brought to light to a wider audience that there is an alternative to staying in a hotel. I think they did us a great favour from a serviced apartment industry perspective. The impact on hotels is probably greater. Because serviced apartments have that longer stay, Airbnb’s model is not really about staying three, four, five months.

Our business hasn’t been affected that much. Of course there’s always going to be people that move to an Airbnb model but equally there’s people that move into a serviced apartment model. We’ve not actually felt anything from it. If we have excess inventory that we can’t sell, maybe one room here or one room there that’s tricky to sell, we might put that on Airbnb.

It’s just a tool of booking for us. We're doing this just in very specific spots, like Manilla. We play around with it and test it a bit. We play in that relocation space or that corporate space, and I think the corporate market doesn’t really view Airbnb as a safe option. What we see from the major clients is that insurance doesn’t cover it, they’ve got internal protocol that says it’s not the best to stay in that environment. Somebody said it best the other day, “a draw full of granny’s underwear in the room you might be staying.” That doesn't really suit the corporate market.

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