Category: Trends

Airbnb and the Hotel Industry: The Past, Present, and Future of Sales, Marketing, Branding, and Revenue Management

By Makarand Mody and Monica Gomez For a long time, the hotel industry did not consider Airbnb a threat. Both the industry and Airbnb claimed they were serving different markets and had different underlying business models. Over the years, as Airbnb become more successful and grown to being larger than the companies in the hotel […]

Comparing apples and oranges? Examining the impacts of Airbnb on hotel performance in Boston

By Tarik Dogru, Makarand Mody, and Courtney Suess If you are in the hotel industry, chances are that Airbnb has come up in conversation at some point or another. The sharing economy phenomenon and the economic, social, and technological changes fueling its growth have challenged the hotel industry to rethink its experiential value proposition to […]

What do guests value most in Airbnb accommodations? An application of the hedonic pricing approach

By Tarik Dogru and Osman Pekin The sharing economy has become a major phenomenon; Airbnb, Uber, ZipCar, Kickstarter and many more comprise the rapidly expanding list of pioneers in the world of the sharing economy. This new concept has introduced an alternative platform for consumers, widely known as peer-to-peer marketplace, in which participants are motivated […]

Creating Memorable Experiences: How hotels can fight back against Airbnb and other sharing economy providers

By Makarand Mody No one can deny that the hotel industry has a fight on its hands when it comes to the peer-to-peer accommodation market. A recent PWC report showed that while 6% of the US population has participated in the sharing economy for the hospitality industry as a consumer; 1.4% has served as a […]

The Making of Airbnb

By Morgan Brown Shortly before Thanksgiving of 2015, it was announced that Airbnb had raised $100 million at a valuation of $25.5 billion. That $100 million was a drop in the bucket compared to the war chest of $1.5 billion the company raised earlier in the summer, raised on the back of increasingly strong growth. […]

U.S. Lodging Industry Update – Q2 2015

Written by Daniel Lesser and Jonathan Jaeger of LW Hospitality Advisors® The U.S Lodging Industry is currently experiencing peak levels as evidenced by year-over-year growth in many of the major performance indices. After the economic downturn in 2008/2009 when the industry experienced substantial decreases in overall performance and valuation, U.S Hotels have rebounded with many […]

Hotel Crowdfunding Grows Up

By Joshua Bowman In July 2014, Zack “Danger” Brown famously launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Kickstarter website. To his surprise, he raised ten times the desired amount in the first day. Within a few months, Mr. Brown raised over $55,000 from 6,911 different complete strangers. Mr. Brown’s idea? Potato salad. Mr. Brown’s crowdfunding campaign […]