The impact of Airbnb on european hotel's occupancy rate and number of beds

Abstract

Since the emergence of digital platforms in the field of the sharing economy, many studies have been conducted in order to try to explain and quantify the effects on the traditional sectors. Regarding the topic of the accommodation and tourist sectors, Airbnb is one of the largest alternative accommodations providers and is expected to lead to major consequences in the hotel industry. This research thesis aims at explaining the impacts the short-term accommodation digital platform “Airbnb” has on the traditional hotel sector. Previous literature mostly focuses on samples of American cities. However, this work’s scope is going to concentrate on a sample of European countries, between 1999 and 2019. In doing so, four different models are going to be constructed. Two of them will have the net occupancy rate of hotel bed places as the dependent variable. The other two will have the number of hotel bed places as the dependent variable. Then, for each independent variable, the dependent variable of interest differs. The latter is either the number of Airbnb listings (the supply of Airbnb accommodations) or a binary variable for when Airbnb becomes active. The results of these models demonstrate that Airbnb has a negative impact on the net occupancy rate of hotels. Therefore, these findings would coincide with many other studies discussed in the literature review. In addition, Airbnb seems to have a positive impact on the number of hotel bed places. Additional details are provided throughout this thesis and policy recommendations are discussed.