Yes I've just come back from a conference, and stayed with Airbnb rather than at a hotel. But I'm a frugal economists, and so may be atypical :-)

Hello Prof Ghadban, some studies have indeed found a decrease in hotel occupancy as a result of would-be guests using Airbnb accommodations instead. See Zervas and Byers (2014) in the link below. Here is the key part from the abstract:

Our baseline estimate is that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings in Texas results in a 0.05% decrease in quarterly hotel revenues, an estimate compounded by Airbnb’s rapid growth.

http://questromworld.bu.edu/platformstrategy/files/2014/07/platform2014_submission_2.pdf

For some, those points may be negative, so I don't expect the hotel industry to die, but Airbnb could severely damage the cheaper end of the leisure market.

There is a paucity of research in this issue. many scholars city the work:

Zervas, G., Proserpio, D., & Byers, J. (2016). The rise of the sharing economy: Estimating the impact of Airbnb on the hotel industry. Boston U. School of Management Research Paper, (2013-16).

but there is no more reliable research on issue of price changes as far as I know

There is no doubt that they are part of the competition in the hotel industry. In my opinion, they compete mainly in the industry of low-middle-class hotels.

This is the abstract done by one student (Darine Abi Saab) that i supervised

This study was designed to investigate the perception of numerous stakeholders regarding the intensity of competition arising from Airbnb presence in the Lebanese Hospitality Market. The researcher adopted the mixed method approach where the qualitative data was gathered from semi-structured interviews with 9 sales professionals in 5, 4 and 3- star hotel categories. This was done to check whether they are aware of its presence in the first place and whether they consider it as a direct competitor for their property on short or on long term. The quantitative data was collected from the surveys filled by 29 Airbnb host respondents out of 124 which represent the active Airbnb hosts in Beirut, Google forms was used to reach this population. Finally, content analysis was practiced to cull the appropriate data from the Airbnb user’s feedback on 55 apartments that are mainly located in strategic areas in Beirut city such as Hamra, Mar Mikahel, and Achrafieh, a total of 934 reviews were analyzed. Through the triangulation approach, the results revealed that the bulk booking on Airbnb is done by Millennial Generation. Additionally the reliable findings showed that low end hotels are considered to be more vulnerable to this competition than high end hotels. Business hotels as well seemed to be less affected than the ones targeting leisure travelers as Airbnb is not yet designed and rightly equipped to meet their imperative needs.

This is a very interesting study. Thanks for the explanation.

I hope that one day peace will come and I will be able to come and check the hummus and the hotels of Beirut :)

Best wishes.

Ya'akov

Thank you, you're the most welcome, I cordially invite you to come and visit. Please check this short video and tell me when you book your tickets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuhIuRhkL6I

Regards,

:):) Nice movie.

Inshalla, I hope one day it will be possible. You are of course welcome as well. :)