@Lizzie
We, as home based hosts, accept guests into our homes. We share our neighborhoods; our ways of life; and our communities as we all try to make bridges across this big world and become more compassionate, nurturing and understanding of one another.
Hotels offer a comfortable level of sameness throughout the industry. Hotels do not bridge cultures and bring people together. Their aim is to make money and keep people fairly well separated for an utterly impersonal feeling. Hotel travelers prefer the predictability of a hotel, its attractions or crave the anonymity that hotels provide.
It is possible that some travelers would want to set up their itinerary to include stays in hotels and BNBs, depending upon where and how they are traveling. Not sure how common this would be, as hotel pricing tends to be significantly higher than BNBs. Budget travelers want to get the most for their dollar. Why choose a hotel in a foreign country for say, a week, when one could traipse all over the countryside for a month in BNBs?
It seems that if you had just one website, you would need to ask a question upfront: BNBs, hotels or combo? The way it is set up now, hotels and remote managed properties are heavily favored.
Even if there were just one website, there would still need to be two distinct customer service divisions. Problems home based have are not the same as hotel based properties. Just look at all of the issues on the forums, often involving some errant guest, safety issue, guest damages or host/guest incompatibilities. Hotels have their security and cleaning crews at the ready and most certainly collect on any security deposits for damages.
And those star ratings? Most home based hosts will never be what one would consider a 5-star hotel rating. Our homes are where we live and are not some luxurious accommodations, unless we are uber rich, and we would not be doing Airbnb. To have a listing on a website for industry rated 5 star hotel, appearing next to a 5 star rated home is laughable. There is flat out no way to compare the two and they should not be compared, as they are totally different. Seriously, if hotels and homes are going to appear together, you will need to dispense with the star ratings completely and come up with something new.