How pandemic has impacted on ‘Leisure travel’
and how Airbnb is preparing for the wave of ‘new normal’ to hit traveling behavior of people.
As we have entered into these unfortunate days where the socializing, travelling and many other activities have come to a halt because of Pandemic. We have been seeing many big industries falling down, its these desperate times that start creating “new normal” to build back the fallen empires. One such industry is Travel Industry, whose downfall affected many other industries like dominoes!
One such industry that’s affected by the pause in travelling industry is Airbnb, an online accommodation booking app/site that allows its users to book their accommodations and experiences in very simple steps.
This is a small research project that I took up for my UX bootcamp to understand how doing a proper research is important to solve problems. In this case study I will be talking about — How Airbnb is affected due to the pandemic and how should they be accepting the new normal in travelling patterns to increase their bookings.
So I started my project with secondary or desk research. Gathered some information from Airbnb app like how they’re taking precautionary measures today i.e. post pandemic, what’s new happening in there etc.
Then I started looking into the stats of on how the travelling is affected, how this has impacted all the online accommodation booking apps and sites. How every other app is doing something different than each other to tackle the competition.
Here are some of the interesting facts and stats that I gathered
Frontline stays are for people actively working on COVID-19 relief efforts (https://news.airbnb.com/frontline-stays-global-program-update/)
In some countries, Airbnb has collaborated with the local authorities and opened up many places for medical professionals dealing with COVID patients. Many people couldn’t just go back home, they needed place to rest after the exhaustive shifts at hospitals and this was one of the great initiatives taken up by Airbnb and many of its kind hosts during this pandemic.
Airbnb listings in India have grown by 115 per cent in the past year, with over 30,000 listings all across India https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/india-is-one-of-the-top-3-strategic-markets-for-airbnb/article24156680.ece
With Airbnb stays are becoming new trend in India, the listings in Airbnb have increased and are majorly used by millennials who are passionate about travelling and exploring new places at affordable prices and good security.
Adapting to the coronavirus outbreak by introducing a new “enhanced cleaning initiative” effective May 1 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/hit-by-covid-airbnb-tweaks-travel-rules-opts-for-24-hr-vacancy-between-bookings-pre-approved-cleaning-products/articleshow/75489245.cms
Airbnb started a initiative with new strict cleaning rules that needs to be followed by the stays. It also added a key change to its terms of use with a 24-hour vacancy period between bookings
So these were some of the links that I went through for my secondary research.
As a outcome of this desk research, I was able to understand this industry a bit, so I started planning for my primary research, that is learn about the Airbnb by its actual users. In order to get the users, I created a survey form with questions drilling down to Airbnb users. Here’s a screenshot of the survey stats
Survey link — https://forms.gle/v5t13RmMADKc9hRs8
From this survey stats, I found out few things about travelling post pandemic and Airbnb India. Both the numbers were very less.
So I started choosing my users from this group and got myself 5 users based on the following facts —
- They have been travelling for leisure post pandemic and used Airbnb for booking.
- They have not travelled at all post pandemic, but had used Airbnb before while travelling
- People travelling only in case of emergency or business who used Airbnb
- Last category, people who dint use Airbnb or mostly dint prefer Airbnb
Once I got to know about my users a bit, I started preparing myself to interview my users by creating some basic questionnaire so that the interview process goes smooth and make sure good quality data is gathered. Scheduled the meetings with the users and recorded the meetings and finally started analyzing the data using different approaches of UX designing.
The following are some of points that I would like to quote from the interviews
“It’s better than booking.com or is as good as hostelworld.com”
“The concept is really good, expand more, expand to more places. More options in small towns and places not just tourist spots”
“The unique places on Airbnb are now popping up in booking.com”
“Definitely yes to Airbnb international but not in India, based on the experiences”
With all these data, I came up with 3 groups of Users —
1. AvidTravellers
These are the users who are mostly travelling to explore the world, love to have different experiences, adventure and live to travel basically
2. NomadicAssociates
This group is a subset of Avid travelers who are setting up this new trend of Work-a-tion. These are the people for whom the dream of travelling along with their 9–5 job has come true, they are going places and working from those places remotely.
3. BizBees
This group travels for work purpose mostly. They have few of these common traits — finding accommodations near by their place of work, with full service etc. with these 3 groups, I started creating empathy maps which helped me understand my users in a much better manner. By re-iterating their words from the interviews, I came up with 2 empathy maps, 1 for AvidTravellers and NomadicAssociates together as there are lot of similarities or commons points in their behavior and the 2nd one is for Bizbees
The Empathy map helped me in creating two personas to represent each of the above groups so that my biases don’t creep in while doing further reasearch.
Persona 1 — Gia
She is a AvidTraveller, but because of pandemic now she’s a NomadicAssociate who’s on a long road trip while still “working from EVERYWHERE”. So this new trend has been set up by people like her.
Persona 2 — Gendry
He is a BizBee, who travels mostly for work or freelance work. He choses to stay in hotels mostly where he gets good service and the travelling to work location is easy.
Now it’s time to breakdown the problem statement based on the problems/frustrations and challenges faced by the user. I’m pointing out few of the things that they mentioned and came up with How Might We questions for the same
- Airbnb is not present everywhere in India
How might we increase the presence of Airbnb in India so that people can book through it everywhere?
2. It needs to add more options in its listings
How might we attract more hosts and accommodation partners to Airbnb to increase the listings for the users on Airbnb?
3. The amenities are not available as mentioned in the app
How might we make sure that the host is being accountable for the amenities/services mentioned by them?
4. “Nobody took the accountability for the things that were not available but were promised as part of stay”
How might we make sure that the host is being accountable for the amenities/services mentioned by them?
5. “Hygiene is the big question post COVID, can’t trust small stays/accommodations”
How might we make the user feel safe about the hygiene being actually followed by the host as mentioned in Airbnb app/site rules
6. Host’s frequent intervention is a problem
How might we make sure the user’s privacy is intact when the host is living on the property rented by them?
With all the data gathered, I realized the problem doesn't lie with travelling pattern shift, but the root cause is something else which are
- > Airbnb is not listing all the properties available in a place.
- > The stays sometimes are not as promised in the App/site.
- > Post COVID, people are not able to trust the safety measures of the places.
With these things in mind, I have come up with the following solutions —
Feature 1 -
Problem — Most users said the property is not as mentioned in the app
Probable solution — The host should add a video of the properties which has to be verified by a person from Airbnb.
How is Airbnb going to do this verification? — Have people to just go verify the properties or Appoint the locals or the guests willing to do it for them by providing them some benefits for doing this task for this they can target the AvidTravellers or NomadicAssociates groups
How’s it visible to the guests who are booking the stay? — A new section can be added in the app when user opens up the stay details for checking out the property. When they select the option “Take a virtual tour of the property” , it shall lead to a new page which will have a section with host videos which needs to be marked as verified by Airbnb. Also, the guests can upload the videos of the stay when they use it.
WireFrame — https://whimsical.com/3uVYbYASQoGGKxRhv4a1hG
Feature 2 -
Problem — People still fear if the place is following the cleaning procedures, even though it’s mentioned that they do in the app.
Probable Solution — Have a track for cleaning protocols, mention when was the stay last cleaned, what are the health conditions of the guests currently staying in. The host should not be allowed to check in the guests in their version of the app until they mark the cleaning protocol and the 1 day wait period is over after the previous guests check out.
Provide nearby emergency contacts in the stays in case of medical emergency things are handy.
This gives some sense of relief for the ones that are very skeptical about travelling post covid.
So this is how I came up to this conclusion, one key learning for me was, the research started with some other thought, but the actual root cause was something else which I inferred from the through research approach.
Thanks for reading my case study :)
