Oasis Collections CEO Parker Stanberry talks:
• Investment from AccorHotels
• Plans for growth & distribution
• How Oasis fits in among traditional hotels
& alternative accommodations
Back in February, AccorHotels
acquired a 30 percent minority stake in Miami-based Oasis Collections,
which operates in 18 cities across the United States, Europe and Latin America.
The investment, a bold step for Accor that set the stage for the hotel industry
to embrace alternative accommodations, also set Oasis Collections on a path to
grow around the globe. Founder and CEO Parker Stanberry spoke with BTN lodging editor Julie Sickel.
BTN: How did you
first get involved with AccorHotels?
Stanberry: They
had an internal mandate to explore alternative accommodations, and they reached
out to us in July last year. They liked what we had to say and vice versa. They
own a minority stake, and so we're still able to do our thing. And they want us
to do our thing and continue to have that startup, nimble mindset. On the other
hand, they're going to be quite helpful and involved in terms of awareness and
distribution. That's what they bring for us, the ability to reach their loyalty
members and the people that search accorhotels.com everyday. From us, they are
looking to be able to offer our product to their customers, whether it's a
brand-new customer or one they have today in their hotels but may be about to
lose to alternative accommodation. They're quite pragmatic about that. They
want to be there to offer an option for those folks who are looking for
something fresh and not the traditional hotel experience.
BTN: Are people now
able to go onto Accor's website and book Oasis Collection properties?
Stanberry: They're
not able to go and book our properties yet. That will be a first-quarter of
next year scenario. We have a banner on the accorhotels.com site, so we are
present there. They are doing some email communications to their loyalty
members. Phase 1 is letting their consumers know who we are and introducing the
partnership, and then Phase 2 will be a more full tech integration where we, as
well as the other players that they've invested in, will sit in the booking
channel of accorhotels.com and be available within the loyalty framework to
accept loyalty points.
BTN: What
distribution channels are you currently using?
Stanberry: We
definitely are not our own distribution channel; we consider ourselves a property
representative that offers a product and an experience. Then in terms of how we
market and sell our product, a lot of it is direct to our website and building
some brand awareness in a very targeted way because we are small. We also work
with some companies directly. Nike, for example, is a big customer of ours for
the Olympics coming up. We work with Google in certain other countries. We also
work with travel agencies, relocation companies, corporate housing
intermediaries. Then we use other online distribution channels. HomeAway is one
of our good partners, FlipKey, TripAdvisor.
BTN: Do you work with
Airbnb?
Stanberry: Less
so, because they don't have an API that's easy to plug into, but we are
certainly open. I see them as a distribution channel for either owners of
properties or companies like ours that are curating properties and
experiences—property managers is the more traditional term for what we do.
[Airbnb and sites like it] are distribution channels for all of those people,
including us. It's a weird dynamic where you are, in a way, competing because
you want consumers to come to you directly, just like hotels need OTAs. No
small company can drive enough demand itself to not need these third-party distribution
channels.
BTN: On the agency
side, are you working with travel management companies?
Stanberry: We are
working with some of the big travel management companies, like Amex Global
Business Travel and Protravel, then also a smattering in the leisure segment.
BTN: What are your
plans for growth?
Stanberry: We are
trying to get to 30 major cities by the end of this year, and 70 to 80 by 2019.
What we have done is cover Latin America very well and opened in some cities in
Europe and the U.S., and now we're doubling down in the U.S. and Europe and
then getting into Asia. This year, we're adding Madrid, Milan, Rome and
Amsterdam in Europe and then San Francisco and Chicago in the U.S. We want to
have a true global footprint that is relevant from both the B2C and B2B
perspective and be able to tell a corporate client, "Yes, we can serve you
in all of the major cities in which you would be sending employees," and
we can also tell the leisure traveler, "Hey, you used us in Buenos Aires
and loved us and so now when you go to Paris, you know what to expect."
It's building a brand. It's being in the same relevant cities that a W Hotel
would want to be in.
BTN: Do you find
yourself getting hemmed in by local legislation targeting Airbnb?
Stanberry: It's certainly
a challenge for the business. Anyone who's in this space has to be cognizant of
regulations, and there are a ton of moving parts. It may be OK in a city one
day but not the next. You have to be nimble, and that's part of our strategy of
being in so many cities quickly: not to have too much exposure to one set of
municipal regulations or the other. At our size, we don't really participate in
the lobbying and the political process that others might, and we are a bit
different and better set up vis-à-vis what the regulations are trying to
address because we are supervising this process quite closely. It's not a sort
of "No one's there, God knows what's going on in these apartments."
BTN: How has the
landscape changed since you started out?
Stanberry: A lot.
HomeAway started in 2005 and bought VRBO, which started in 1996, right off the
bat. You had a bunch of mom-and-pop vacation rental operations, but for city
rental it was pretty much Craigslist. That's what I used to find my apartment
in Buenos Aires when I moved down there at the end of 2006. That's how I got
this idea: my own experience of sifting through Craigslist and dealing with
local realtors in a foreign country and not being sure how to pay. Now you've
got the vacation rental players still very much alive and kicking, and they've
scaled and multiplied. In the cities, there's Airbnb. I see them sort of as a
classifieds [section]. They are polishing and professionalizing the Craigslist
experience. We're different because we're offering quality control, vetting,
curation and on-the-ground concierge service from dedicated, local Oasis
employees.
BTN: Who are the
property owners you work with?
Stanberry: Mainly individual property owners. We aim for nonprimary
residences. We don't like people coming in and feeling, "Eh, I can't use
this closet because it's full of stuff," and there's owner's stuff in the
pantry. We want travelers to feel confident, like they're walking into a
polished, comfortable, clean scenario, making it as hotel-like as possible
within the confines of a unique apartment. So it's mostly individual, one-off,
second-home property owners, but some owners are real estate developers who may
have a small building they've devoted to this or they may have bought eight
units in a larger building to put with us.