Airbnb, Wine Ambassador’s Bundled Bottle Promo Aimed At Guests And Hosts

Airbnb hosts have been offered a new mechanism to make their listings more attractive and lucrative with the help of a little wine.

Digital wine club Wine Ambassador has officially announced a new offering it introduced last month to let hosts on the homesharing platform partner with the brand via an exclusive hosts-only wine club. The wine club allows hosts to present access to exclusive fine wines to their guest, and earn some residual revenue for their efforts. With the number of Airbnb listings across the globe approaching 6 million, the firm noted in a press release, competition is tight and providing a special perk can give hosts an edge.

Airbnb hosts are using the wine club to pique interest and provide a unique experience, Wine Ambassador President Brett Hudson said in the press release. “If the renters like the wine and want to get access to the club, they can simply scan a QR code provided at the property for promoting the exclusive wine club,” he said. “When renters opt in, the owners generate income.”

Creating Connections In The New Economy

Wine Ambassador is not the web’s only wine club. But unlike many other wine clubs, Wine Ambassador is not focused on offering consumers a discounted bulk buying experience, but on offering more discerning consumers access to a selection of fine, curated wines for a small monthly fee. Those bottles, once purchased, are delivered to the club’s “Ambassadors” (what the service calls its subscribers) along with details about the wine, the winemaker and how to get the most from each bottle.

The offer, according to Wine Ambassador, is designed to give individuals running a business an extra incentive to offer their customers. The firm already offers similar specialty clubs for entrepreneurs in the yachting business (to offer to their rental guests) and restaurateurs looking for custom extensions to their menu for consumers. More than simply make the properties more popular, the new Wine Ambassador helps hosts develop a secondary revenue stream into their side-hustle homesharing businesses.

But the main appeal of the program may simply be in helping hosts find ways to distinguish their properties on a platform that has grown by leaps and bounds in 2021 as the Airbnb platform now claims 4 million hosts and over 5.6 million listings worldwide, with approximately 14,000 new hosts joining the platform each month.

“Wine Ambassador never stops innovating because we know wine can make any occasion or private moment with loved ones better. The owners of vacation and long-term stay properties who we partner with understand that and know a great opportunity to stand out and generate more revenue when they see it,” Hudson said.

The New Power Of Building Bundles

Given the rapid rise of the connected economy in the era of COVID-19, Wine Ambassador’s move to connect with the travel segment seems a smart bet on the changing shape of the future. As CellPoint Digital CEO Kristian Gjerding told Karen Webster in a recent conversation for the PYMNTS Connected Economy eBook, bundling connected experiences into the overall travel landscape is becoming an increasingly important part of the travel segment’s comeback in 2021.

The challenge every business must face as the economy is restarting, he said, is how to center the consumer in the commerce experience and leverage the technology of the connected economy to do it.

“I know airlines are looking at all different kinds of ways to partner up for new services to be part of the entire flow, so you create a single process for the traveler to get everything they need,” Gjerding said.

Bundling in travel, he noted, is far from new — but what is happening in the connected economy outstrips what we knew before as innovators and entrepreneurs are now tasked with creating more optionality for consumers available to them at a single touchpoint.