AIRBNB AS A THREAT TO THE HOTEL INDUSTRY: END USER PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The hospitality sector, particularly the hotel industry, plays a vital role in the area of tourism for any country or city. In recent years, the hospitality sector has found a new player in the form of Airbnb. Since its launch, Airbnb has been gaining popularity worldwide amongst tourists as the preferred choice of accommodation. As such, the question of whether Airbnb is a strong competitor, and by extension, a possible substitute of the hotel industry, arises.Given that the emergence of Airbnb is relatively recent, there is a lack of research on the platform and amongst the research that does exist, only a handful try to look at tourist motivations for the use of Airbnb over traditional hotels. Thus, it would be useful to look into this area and at the same time determine if characteristics of the traveller has an impact on their choices of one accommodation types over the other. This research paper has utilised exploratory research to gain an idea of consumer perceptions regarding their preferred choice of travel accommodation and the reasons behind it. In order to do that, a survey was conducted on 150 individuals who have used both forms of accommodations in the past, so as to aid in the understanding of accommodation choice through methods of comparison. The findings revealed that travel purpose and type of hotel usually booked by the respondent had a statistically significant effect on the consideration of Airbnb as a substitute. Additionally, it was discovered that location, price, safety and hotel amenities were influential factors for the preference of hotels over Airbnb while price, good reviews and safety were influential for the preference of Airbnb over hotels.