Riding on the BNB wave

Bed and breakfasts (BNBs) in Asian countries have become a new thing for tourists who are looking to imbibe the local culture, and sample the sights and sounds less trampled on by organized tourism packages. Of course, these BNBs are also much cheaper than hotels.

The tradition of BNBs has been around for decades, but it has only reached its current popularity with the success of personal online booking sites, where an individual would have the capability to get a good feel of potential accommodation facilities through posted photographs and online chatting with the home owners.

Nowadays, tourists who have booked airline tickets for a holiday travel, usually online too, search popular sites like airbnb.com, booking.com, trivago.com and a few dozen others for alternative lodgings that can offer clean, reliable, safe, and less expensive stays.

Travel explosion

This improved sophistication of BNBs has led to what is now regarded as a travel explosion, not only of tourists from more affluent economies, but even among Filipinos who dream of touring countries far from home. BNBs have certainly made holiday travel more colorful.

For these very reasons, our Department of Tourism (DOT) should consider putting on its agenda the promotion of Filipino BNBs, much like what Sweden did when it listed its entire country on the online booking platform Airbnb to promote its tourism program.

Of course, it need not be the same scheme that Sweden cooked up, but something scaled down for more manageability and a little scaled up than the DOT’s homestay program not just in quality but also in the number of enrolled venues.

The government’s homestay program has given tourists alternative accommodation especially in off-beaten paths where traditional hotels do not want to invest. This accredited homes offer board and lodging while sharing the Filipino culture and lifestyle to their guests.

Poor packaging

To date, the DOT has only about 150 accredited homestay facilities, which would be like finding a needle in a haystack given the number of tourist sites in the Philippines where no decent hotels are available to accommodate tourists.

This list of homestays, however, needs to be packaged in a friendlier and more attractive format. It may not be as sophisticated as the more popular online booking sites, but should be more appeal than simply a file listing containing just names and phone numbers.

Our tourism office has to be more adept at promoting the country, and not just relying on expensive advertisements or tourist promotion expositions. Sweden and Airbnb’s joint undertaking should inspire us to use the online medium in promoting our own tourist sites.

Benefits

The popularity of online BNB bookings presents a number of advantages. It’s good that leading booking web sites are able to show alternative lodgings to interested visitors in appealing ways with photographs, videos, and even an actual person to talk to.

Take on for example travel in Japan, which had been recognized in previous years as being expensive, but has now put on a more approachable face. The increase in the number of Japanese BNBs and homestays posted on the web has driven inbound tourist numbers to new heights.

People are now talking about how affordable it is to travel to a country that offers so much culture, sights and cuisine. For many Japanese, this has helped bring in some extra earnings at a time when their economy had been struggling.

This could be the same for our case. Filipinos are discovering that one need not be an accredited DOT homestay owner/operator to post an advertisement on the web to earn that much-needed extra buck, or to establish an income stream that would pay for the amortization of one or several purchased condominium units.

By posting their BNBs in immensely picture-pretty ways, the Philippines too gets its share of good publicity. Potential tourists are able to realize that there are equally better destinations than Boracay or Cebu to visit and enjoy.

Potential problems

Online bookings, however, also have spawned their own problems for host countries. Being largely unregulated, advertised BNBs do not always fall within the quality and safety standards that our tourism office would want.

There are still the occasional sad stories about tourists experiencing untrustworthy homeowners, or even facilities and services way below the standards that were promised. It’s a good thing that these incidents are the exemption, thanks largely to the fact that there is a healthy exchange of feedback on the web that encourage travellers to post their experiences, good or bad, for others to read.

Still, an unfortunate incident leaves a bad mark on Filipinos and the Philippines, and a single undesirable case that goes viral can unmake all the efforts that honest enterprising homeowners had put in to attract potential tourists. Worse, the government does not have regulations that will safeguard tourists.

If it’s any consolation, this is a problem that many countries face. Thailand, for example, which has more BNBs advertised on online booking and community websites than us, has earned more than an earful of bad reviews from disgruntled visitors.

Regulation issues

There is also the interest of governments to be able to cash in also on the earnings of BNB and homestay owners. Without regulations in place to oversee these mom-and-pop facilities, it is difficult to impose taxes on revenues.

In Sweden, Japan and some parts of the United States, their governments are already adopting legislation that limits the number of days that BNBs may accept in favor of hotels and motels that complained for unfair business practices, something that could happen in the Philippines too.

Notwithstanding the above issues, online accommodation bookings and BNBs will continue to gain popularity as airline travel becomes more affordable to more people. We should make sure that we are able to cash in on this.

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