Where Oasis Collections Fits in the Lodging Landscape

• 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.