Marketing Of Services

Marketing of Services
Case: OnefineStay

Submitted to: Prof. Neelu Bhullar

By:

Maulasree Maiti

Yogit Vij

Agastya Kumar
 Marketing Of Services
Case Facts

Greg Marsh was founder & CEO of onefinestay, which was founded in 2009 in London, initially
funded by friends & family of the respective founders.
It offered high end home rentals to the travellers, so that they can have a taste of more authentic &
local experience.
It targeted the luxury residential properties which were vacant & convinced home owners to sign up
so that they earn extra income on the otherwise vacant properties.
Initially, the company struggled to sign up the home owners and hardly anyone joined, but by 2011,it
had more than 100 home owners in London.
In 2012, it started its New York operations and raised another round of funding. By the end of the
year it had more than 1000 member home, owing its success mainly to London Olympics in 2012.
In 2013, it began its operations in Paris & Los Angeles. And by 2014 it had 2000 member home with
more than 5000 rooms.

Home Owners Profile

Member home owners were people with average income of more than 250,000 USD.
Properties listed were homeowners primary residence.
They travel for few weeks to months in a year.

Guests Profile

Majority of the guests were leisure travellers followed by business travellers.

Length of stay averaging between 4-7 nights.
Travellers who would have otherwise stayed in 4-star price point type of hotel.
More than two-third guests are English speaking.
Loyal Customer base, who would book again with onefinestay

Service provided to Home Owners

Registration Process on site process to register assets of the owner. Detail information about
everything in home, its location, rules & expectations of owners.
Provisioning bag, tag & store owners things. Clean & prepare home for the guests.
Reverse the setting after the guests leave and clean the home so that the owners find it better than it
was.

Service provided to Guests

Online & offline booking channels

Clean & prepare home for guests
Meet & Greeter to meet & greet at the residential property, explain house rules
Iphone- to explore nearby restaurants, local maps, data packages, etc
Maid service(once a week)

EXPAMSION STRATEGY
 Marketing Of Services
Greg Marsh was very eager for the international expansion of Onefinestay. He wanted to establish the
concepts operations in every major city of the world. For Onefinestays expansion plans, Marsh pointed out
two major learnings, first being increasing brand awareness and having good referrals. The second learning
was the requirement of strong general managers to run local markets. Being a growing hospitality brand, it
was essential for Onefinestay to have a global footprint and cater to all the key markets of the world. In the
expansion plans there were two strategies that the company can take to expand. Following are the two
strategies of expansion and the analysed pros and cons of each of the two-

1. To add 10 new cities around the world to the Onefinestay footprint by 2018 (MARKET
DEVELOPMENT)

PROS:

Addition of new markets would lead to decline of customer acquisition costs

Increase of customer lifetime value
More markets mean catering to more customers and retaining existing customers
Addition of new markets mean creating brand awareness
It would help in achieving profits in the longer run
Diversification of business risk
Reduce dependence on existing markets

CONS:

Increase in cost of marketing and operations at the initial stages

Expansion would require significant amount of time and resources
Rapid expansion could risk the companys reputation and Net Promoter Scores
Variation in service quality and levels in different markets could potentially lower the brand image
Risks involved in international expansion includes political, economic and cultural risk
2. To increase Onefinestays market penetration in London, New York, Paris and Los Angeles
(MARKET PENETRATION)
 Marketing Of Services

PROS:

Help of strong word of mouth referrals from existing hosts. Hence it would be easy to find hosts in
existing markets
Company would leverage the fixed marketing and operations cost already incurred in these markets
for establishing their presence
Strengthening of brand equity in such strong and leading travel markets
As the cultures and patterns of existing markets are well known, it would take less time and resource
for expansion

CONS:

Limited offering of travel cities

Missing out on emerging markets in rest of the world
Killing potential international expansion plans
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Take-on Process:
Marketing Of Services

TWO-SIDED MARKETPLACE

The dilemma for Onefinestay, whether to orient the brand around the guests or the hosts?

An Organisation should only build two-sided marketplaces or turn two sided into a single sided marketplace
where the user acquisition of one side is of least resistance and focus on the other where revenues are of
paramount importance.

Since the business model of Onefinestay was such, that it required equal importance to the supply side as
well as the demand side.

Homeowner Hosts: Supply Side

The whole functionality on the supply side revolved around the emotional comfort of homeowners,
credible service partnership and lastly the trust that their home will be well taken care off.

Onefinestay discouraged folks from membership if it seemed that it isnt going to be valuable for the
homeowner or to them on the medium to long term perspective. The objective was to create a value
proposition to be actualized by the stakeholders.

Attracting Guests: Demand Side

One-third of the companys channel business was traditional and through offline travel organisations;
two-third was with the online organisations

The service dominant logic (S-D Logic) views the customer as an operant resource, capable of acting on
other resources, a collaborative partner who co-creates value with the firm.

Co-creation helped Onefinestay develop a portfolio that was distinctive. The home listings were
clustered into four consumer-use groupings-Family, Prestige, Explore and Work.

Onefinestay Co-created through peer to peer connections, sharing resources on a platform distinct
wherein the guests never interacted with the hosts, Joint ideation and experience centers.
 Marketing Of Services
The companys homepage geared primarily for the guest; sharing results of co-creation through testimonials,
sample properties, news and travel publications. The website also had a dedicated tab for potential hosts to
continue development and create a balance between Demand creation and Demand fulfillment.

Industry Reference:

Groupon, AirBnB and Uber all have one common trait which passed through their blood: they are focused in
acquiring the sellers which are small & medium businesses, landlords or drivers who need customers. The
best part for them is that their buyers are far simpler to acquire because they are just consumers stuck with a
need. For example, a consumer wants the best discounted deal (Groupon), a place to stay when they travel to
another location (AirBnB) and a transport which takes them from point A to B where the resource is hard to
acquire at certain times of the day (Uber). In each one of them, the user acquisitions for buyers are of least
friction. You have to identify which side is frictionless and build the other side that is not frictionless.