Airbnb is the leading platform for renting apartments and/or private or shared rooms, founded with the goal of helping users save money while traveling.
We can define it as a kind of social network where we can make our homes available to travelers for a price we can set as we see fit. The website handles both collection and payment (it collects payment in advance, but does not pay the homeowner until we’ve stayed there and everything has gone as promised).
Among its advantages, we’d highlight the savings we can achieve, the opportunity it gives us to meet people right from the start (for example, if we rent a shared house) and the fact that the website works very well, featuring a user-friendly interface with a whole range of intuitive features so that any user—whether or not they’ve used this type of website before—knows how to navigate it at all times.
Now then… to what extent is this hurting hotels? Is it really causing irreparable damage to the hotel industry, as so many media outlets are going out of their way to proclaim to the world? Let’s analyze this issue in detail.
Airbnb vs. Hotels
Studies conducted between 2013 and 2016 indicate that, while it is true that many people rely on Airbnb for lodging, its market share is actually very small. The hotel industry has been able to adapt to changing times by offering very competitive prices without ever compromising on its high standards of service—which is precisely one of the main reasons why customers ultimately choose hotels.
One out of every two rooms rented on Airbnb is intended for extended stays of 7 nights or more; in other words, we could say that the website’s direct competition consists of hotels designed for extended stays… something that, according to experts, is not very common.
The data shows that both sectors have grown in parallel; in other words, neither has taken jobs away from the other. Similarly, experts are cautious about drawing any conclusions: Airbnb has been in the market since 2008, and the global economic crisis began to spread in 2009.
The user, seeking to minimize costs, discovered a new way to save money on Airbnb. Now, many years later, it seems that the economic crisis is not as severe as it once was, so the business has stabilized; we can see that the number of hotel guests has increased, while the number of Airbnb guests has decreased, reaching a middle ground between the two options.
Perhaps, looking ahead to the near future, we’ll be able to see which sector ultimately establishes itself in the market, but it’s still too early to draw any conclusions.
