Airbnb and Booking.com: Sharing Economy Competing Against Traditional Firms?

Airbnb, an onli­ne plat­form for peer-to-peer short-term accom­mo­da­tion ren­tal, is gro­wing witha spec­ta­cu­lar spe­ed in most coun­tries of the world. This cre­ates a gre­at regu­la­to­ry chal­len­ge, as empi­ri­cal evi­den­ce sug­gest that Airbnb may have a signi­fi­cant impact on the tra­di­tio­nal hotel indu­stry and on the housing mar­ket. The aim of this ana­ly­sis isto com­pa­re the offers of Airbnb to tra­di­tio­nal servi­ces and to exa­mi­ne the com­pe­ti­tion betwe­en the dif­fe­rent busi­ness models. The empi­ri­cal ana­ly­sis is based on a uni­que data­set of scra­ped data on the listings of Airbnb and Booking.com in War­saw, Poland. The offers are com­pa­red using descrip­ti­ve sta­ti­stics and KDE ana­ly­sis. The paper sup­ports that Airbnb is pro­vi­ding a che­aper alter­na­ti­ve for hospi­ta­li­ty servi­ces in all pri­ce seg­ments. Con­trol­ling for com­mon attri­bu­tes (e.g. distan­ce from the city centre),hedonic pri­ce regres­sions show signi­fi­cant pri­ce dif­fe­ren­ces betwe­en the platforms.