The impact of Airbnb on the economic performance of independent hotels: an empirical investigation of the moderating effects

ABSTRACT

The evidence on the effect that sharing economy accommodation platforms have on the performance of hotels is not univocal, and a general picture about the circumstances under which hotels may suffer the least from this disruption is still missing. This paper contributes to bridge this gap by examining the role that contingent factors can play in reducing the negative impact of Airbnb on the profitability growth of independent hotels. We examine whether the attractiveness of the city zone where hotels are located and their online reputation moderate the effect that the usage of Airbnb listings has on the profitability growth of independent hotels. Using a panel dataset of a sample of 725 independent hotels located in six Italian cities with high tourism attractiveness, and by triangulating ISTAT, AIDA, AirDNA, TripAdvisor and Trustyou datasets, we found that the negative effect of Airbnb on the profitability growth of hotels is reduced when the hotels are located in attractive city zones. However, the online reputation of hotels does not have any significant moderating effect on the relationship investigated. We discuss how these results contribute to understand competitive dynamics in the hotel industry through a lens based on the disruptive innovation theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Airbnb
• hotel
• tourism
• sharing economy
• profitability growth

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the research support of two interdepartmental centres at the Politecnico di Torino, i.e. the SmartData@PoliTO centre on Big Data and Data Science, and the FULL – the Future Urban Legacy Lab centre. We acknowledge AirDNA for the data provision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).