Short rentals, also known as short-term accommodation or temporary rentals, are a business model in which a property is rented for short periods, generally less than 30 days.
Photo: Freepik
In recent years, the accommodation sector in Colombia has undergone a significant transformation with the arrival and growth of short-rental platforms, such as Airbnb and Booking. These new lodging modalities have intensified competition in the sector, offering travelers more flexible and personalized alternatives to traditional options such as hotels. Currently, more than 62,000 tourism service providers have joined together to promote a movement to formalize and regularize the short-term rental market in the country.
Leading this effort is the Colombian Association of Tourist Service Providers through Digital Platforms (Asohost), an association that works to improve the rental process and security for urban residents, in collaboration with owners of tourist homes, platforms digital and other key industry players. The objective: to establish a regulatory framework that guarantees the quality of the service and the safety of users, while promoting the harmonious integration of this type of lodging in local communities.
Currently, the union has more than 2,000 members and represents 55.98% of the tourism service providers in Colombia, focused on tourist homes in both rural and urban areas. Its objective is to professionalize the short-term rental sector, and guarantee that its growth has a positive impact on the economic and social development of Colombian cities. They also seek to focus on promoting the legality, quality and sustainability of the sector, establishing standards and good practices that protect the interests of hosts, guaranteeing a better experience for guests.
El Espectador spoke with Juan Camilo Vargas, president of Asohost, to learn more about the work being promoted and the role the organization plays in the short-term rental market.
What are the main concerns of short-rent tourism service providers in Colombia?
More than concerns, I believe that we face important challenges that we must address with integrity and competitiveness. One of the main challenges today is to ensure that the government and other organizations fully understand the changes and transformations generated by disruptive technologies. As they say in the technology sector, technology advances at a dizzying pace, while laws and regulations advance very slowly. There is often a gap between the speed of development of laws consistent with technological changes and reality.
There is another fundamental element that I always mention and that is the democratization of the industry and the profits generated by tourism. Why do I talk about democratization of profits? Because the collaborative economy and digital platforms allow a person, who has a vacant room in her apartment, to offer it to travelers from all over the world. This generates additional income that complements his economy.
What concrete measures is Asohost taking to promote the legality, quality and sustainability of the sector?
It is important to highlight that tourist homes, short and vacation rentals are an accommodation model, just like hotels, glamping or hostels. However, its distinctive characteristic is that to venture into this model, hundreds of millions of pesos are not needed as in the construction of a hotel. Simply, an existing asset is energized, whether it is a complete home or, as established by the standard, a partial space thereof, such as a room within an apartment.
Given this, we are preparing in several ways: first, by increasingly articulating the sector, because together we are stronger. On the other hand, we seek advice from legal teams that allow us to have forceful arguments in the face of legislative risks. What is a legislative risk? It occurs when a legislator, politician or representative, who is in charge of developing the standards in our country, attempts to regulate us without really knowing our industry. That’s when we go to them, knock on the door, introduce ourselves and explain: who we are, how we operate, what our needs are and the opportunities our sector offers.
Likewise, we have carried out educational work by visiting legislators and congressmen. In addition, we organize in-person and virtual events, such as the great forum in Medellín, where we brought together more than 600 people in alliance with the Tourism Cluster of the Chamber of Commerce. This forum was a success and allowed us to show new points of view to enrich the dialogue and debate about the critical situation that occurred in that city.
Our strategy is to face the risks and regulation that will surely come, defend the interests of all our associates and the union.
What is the strategy to continue strengthening the short-term rental union in Colombia?
The first thing is that we are developing training programs for the entire sector on an ongoing basis. This helps us build a community, bringing knowledge for free from recognized experts who have participated in our webinars. We’ve had a lot of amazing experts sharing their knowledge.
Secondly, we are developing certifications for quality standards and service provision. In addition, we have worked on an insurance policy in alliance with an insurer, since the new standard requires this requirement for our sector. It was a challenge to bring out this product at a coherent and accessible cost, since a requirement that no one can meet does not make sense.
In our plans, we always mention that we are an open doors and windows association. We want to increasingly break down the barriers to associativity. Sometimes membership costs can be a barrier, which is why we have very low dues. But now we are developing a subscription model for membership, with even lower costs, where members get a lot of benefits. This is one of the great innovations we are currently working on to attract more members and convey the importance of belonging to this type of organization.
What role can technology, innovation and sustainability play in improving user experience and sector efficiency?
Technology is essential for efficient rental management, optimizing processes, saving time and providing an excellent accommodation experience. We must deepen the technological penetration of the sector so that the service we provide is increasingly efficient and our tasks are made easier, avoiding re-processes due to lack of knowledge of the available tools.
Now, as for innovation, it is key in the current tourism sector. If you visit the Airbnb home page, you will be able to understand what needs to be handled as innovation. Innovation is not a whim, but a trend and a requirement of modern consumers. In the Airbnb home, we see accommodations conceptualized as the X-Men Mansion, a house that evokes the movie Up using a crane for guests to fly, this is innovation and absolute experience, in line with the needs and demands of today’s consumers, hand in hand with technology.
Environmental sustainability is also crucial. There are dramatic figures that indicate that a tourist uses four times more water than a resident and 25% more energy. From our spaces, we must generate awareness and communication initiatives within our advertisements to promote the good use of resources.
How does Asohost handle competition with large international vacation rental platforms and what role does regulation play in this context?
Platforms are fundamental tools for us. We know that more and more players like Airbnb, Despegar and others are entering the vacation rental game, and we see this as something very positive, since it generates healthy competition that translates into benefits for our sector. This is because the main role of the platforms is to market our accommodations in exchange for a commission. The greater the competition between platforms, we will obtain more beneficial costs and more alternatives to choose from.
Furthermore, they give us something important: visibility, and that is where the platforms play an efficient role by being global infrastructures with the capacity to put Colombia’s name on all continents and regions of the world. A task that is practically impossible to achieve on our own directly without a million-dollar budget in international marketing.
