Airbnb still struggles to compete with hotels

Occupancy at Airbnb properties follows the same trends as the hotel sector, with cities that experience high demand for hotel rooms also seeing high levels of Airbnb use. But overall, occupancy and rates at Airbnb properties are lower than their equivalent hotel accommodation.

These are the findings of a new report by STR, which compared the trends of hotel and Airbnb performance in a series of key global cities. As an example, Tokyo, which had high average hotel occupancy of 84.8% for the 12 months ending July 2016, also had the highest Airbnb occupancy level of the 13 studied cities, at 61.5%.

While this may seem like a natural trend, it also points to conclusion that hotels and Airbnb accommodation complement, rather than compete with, each other.

STR studied the accommodation sectors in Barcelona, Boston, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, New Orleans, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Tokyo and Washington DC, analysing its own hotel performance data alongside information provided by Airbnb. Overall, hotel occupancy was found to be significantly higher than Airbnb.

“We are excited to share our findings from the first comprehensive study on this topic that uses actual Airbnb data and not a scraped data set,” said Jan Freitag, STR’s senior vice president for lodging insights. “Data suggests that Airbnb owners seem to not deploy yield management strategies as effectively as their hotel counterparts. Occupancies of hotels are higher than Airbnb occupancies, while hotels charge a higher room rate.”

If Airbnb is competing with hotels in any sector, it appears to be the long-stay leisure market. Airbnb guests typically stayed longer than the average hotel guest in the seven US markets studied; 46.5% of all Airbnb room nights sold were part of a seven-day or longer stay. In comparison, only 9% of hotel room nights were attributed to extended-stay brands.

But Airbnb’s share of business travel (an estimated 10%) was substantially smaller than its share of leisure travel.

On average, hotel occupancy was significantly higher than Airbnb occupancy during the 12-month period. Hotel occupancy was highest in Sydney (85.4%) and lowest in Mexico City (68.7%), while Airbnb occupancy was highest in Tokyo (61.5%) and lowest in Mexico City (18.4%).

And nightly rates are also higher in hotels; for the 12 months to July 2016, the average daily rate (ADR) for hotels in the seven US markets was US$16 higher than comparable Airbnb rates. The largest difference was reported in Miami, where hoteliers charged US$44 more on average than Airbnb hosts.

Hotel ADR increased in all but one market (Paris) in the 12-month period, but Airbnb rates decreased in eight markets and increased in five.

Overall, Airbnb’s share of demand and revenues in the studied markets were just 4% and 3%, respectively.