Harking back to the creation of Airbnb by its founders, who wanted to provide accommodation for attendees at events in their hometown of San Francisco, the online marketplace for holiday rental homes has launched the ‘Airbnb for Events’ tool. The tool will offer event organizers and conference planners the ability to create an interactive map of Airbnb listings that are near their venues, and embed the map directly on their event website in just minutes.

On intimating Airbnb about the event, the company will create an interactive map of Airbnb listings for the event website to help attendees find nearby homes. They will also create a personalised landing page for their event on Airbnb.com that event organisers can share with attendees and use to market their event.

With Airbnb, people attending an event will have a broad range of options—from work-friendly to fun and funky.

While this is the perfect tool for events, Airbnb is also working with other companies to showcase the versatility of the interactive listings map- like event registration and ticketing platforms, event management platforms, wedding platforms, and trip planners. Initial partners include Insider, Inspirock, Picatic, RSVPify, Taquilla and WeddingWire. Currently, for corporate travel companies, the service does not integrate with Airbnb’s third-party booking tool.

This is the first concentrated effort from the platform to officially enter the event space, probably angering hotels that host conferences in the process, as it takes attendees out of their properties and into alternative accommodations. On the other hand, properties that list through Airbnb – under its newly developed partnership with Siteminder – will be included in the new listings maps alongside Homes.

Moreover, adding Airbnb as a recommended option for events will add more local accommodation, provides amenities that hotels can’t, and will help attendees save a lot of money. Its selection of more than four million listings in over 65,000 cities provides both prime locations and the comforts of home, allowing guests to see any city from a local perspective. The company will not just help organizers, but also cities to manage some of the biggest events and spread the economic benefits of these events to citizens.

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When it comes to the travel industry, everyone understands the importance of knowing the customer. In today’s increasingly digitized landscape, optimizing customer engagement has never been more complicated. While in the past, all efforts were focused towards getting a customer to book immediately, the new-age digital strategy extends beyond the initial touch-point.

This is exactly what the Digital Travel Summit APAC 2018 will help unearth. The leading digital event for travel, hospitality and leisure executives in the region, will be held from 17th April to 19th April at the Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore.

The three-day event will help participants learn how to take their digital, e-commerce and customer experience strategies to the next level with enhanced personalization at every touch-point. Combining inspirational case studies from pioneers with dozens of small-group, peer-to- peer learning formats, Digital Travel Summit APAC will deliver a practical roadmap for every challenge and opportunity that companies face.

A snapshot of the Digital Travel Summit APAC, 2017

The list of speakers has prominent personalities of the travel industry, including Suren Ratwatte, CEO SriLankan Airlines, Grant Colquhoun, Senior Director of Account Management Asia-Pacific at TripAdvisor, Jane Jie Sun, CEO at CTrip, and Christophe Chavry, Head of Digital Commerce Experience E-commerce at Cathay Pacific, among others.

The event aims to drive digital innovation by inspiring executives with AI-powered chat and conversational commerce that guides consumers through the purchase and planning process. It will help participants perfect customer experience, creating a seamless cross-device UX for customers’ evolving shopping habits.Through sessions, participants will also discover content that provides differentiation and real customer engagement, understand how to execute an effective omnichannel marketing strategy that both delights customers and increases direct bookings, and master mobile marketing.

Learn more about the event and register, here.

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