We have been in the tourism industry for about 15 years (we obviously started before joining the Airbnb platform...lol).
We have received pitches/ offers and questions about "tourism replated free app" many many any times in the past and the frequency has increased significantly over the past 5 years or so.
Most times the pitch/ email/ outreach starts off something like-
"Hello Owner!
We have a new and exciting app that we are/ have developed that we would like to offer to you to offer to your guests. This would be a free app for you and your guests to use. This app will help to increase your guests satisfaction at no cost to you."
There are normally a few things that cause concern from when we do decide to take a chance on a new app or one that is in alpha/ bata development that causes us to be very cautious on which ones we decide to try/ implement.
1) For semi obvious reasons they are often hesitant to explain exactly how the app works and what it does prior to signing an NDA. This is essentially a first point barrier to entry.
2) Actual support when there are tech issues with the app has often caused more issues than the positives that the app brought to our guests due to issues with the app.
3) Often there is a need for us to purchase other hardware to utilize the actual software.
4) Forcing the guests to download an app, that is not yet supported by by the Apple or Google App store.
In answer to your actual questions-
If a guy wanted to promote his tourism related startup (a free app) in your BnB, and it would help to increase your customer's satisfaction for free, would you allow him to do so?
Once we were allowed to test out the app and verified its functionality and usefulness we would most likely test it in a small number of our listings first prior to rolling it out into all of our listings that we are associated with. The caveat to this would be that this app would have to be useful, free to the guests and not allow outside advertisement that we did not approve.
would you ask him for something in return?
It depends. If there is any sort of monetary remediation we would either want a % of that for the access to our guests. If it becomes a pay to use app we would want either a severly discounted or free future access.
