Hotels and lodges in the country have raised concerns with the entrance of a new competitor, AirBnB, an online platform where individuals can rent out rooms for travellers. Local operators indeed have reason to worry as AirBnB partners undercut them in terms of pricing. Hotels are victims of innovators and they will have to rethink their strategies if they are to survive and not just complain of “unfair competition”. Innovation has seen the rise of such companies as Uber, the world’s largest taxi service that owns no vehicles, Netflix that shows movies without having a cinema hall. The same goes for the now familiar sight on our streets; orange coloured courier motorcycles emblazoned with the word “Hellofood”, the world’s biggest restaurant that has no restaurant. This trend was brought to the core by Amazon which has now been dethroned by Alibaba as the world’s largest retailer that owns no stores of its own. Yes, some of these “invasions” in traditional domains could be disruptive. Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, coined the term; “destructive innovations”. These are small companies that out compete and ultimately destroy bigger established ones. But Rwandan hotels need not worry with being hounded out of the market by cheaper versions. As one official of the Rwanda Development Board pointed out, the country is targeting high-end visitors who will opt for excellent hotels instead of an unoccupied room in someone’s home. The biggest challenge to our local hotels, therefore, is the entrance on the market of established international hotel brands. Here, excellence will be the benchmark of whether they survive. So they should not complain of “unfair competition” from non-starters, the competition is elsewhere and they have to meet the challenge.
