Search results

This study aims to examine, via social exchange theory and social representations, how online vacation rentals (OVR) connect tourists and owners. It also aims to understand the dynamics and representations between owners and tourists in Albufeira, one of the most popular counties in the south of Portugal, supported on the theories of representation and social exchange. More specifically this research is structured on the following question: how the consequents – engagement and personalization – are materialized in the testimonies and descriptions posted on the vacation rentals platform.

The initial assumption for this exploratory study is that OVR bring both material and intangible advantages for the individual consumer and for the community of homeowners. Drawing from netnography, using textual analysis, including the use of a corpus linguistics software program (WordSmith v.6), the authors aim to capture the multidimensional meanings presented by the tourists' online reviews of their travelling experience and home rental.

The findings suggest that sharing the same nationality can facilitate engagement and influence the decision-making process (selection of property). Furthermore, findings point to a sense of place construed through affordances of place, home and a functional sense of place. Personalization of services is perceived by tourists as a positive outcome, this being the result of a positive evaluation that properties have received.

The innovative design of this research, combining textual analysis and netnography of data reviews, and the analysis of this new form of tourism are the main contributions of this paper.

This case is mainly about the development journey of Tujia, a unicorn in China's accommodations-sharing sector, as well as the development status of the sector. On December 1, 2011, Tujia.com—China's first medium- and high-end vacation apartment booking platform—was formally launched, and it announced the first round of capital injection in less than half a year after its launch. It completed D and D+ round of financing on August 3, 2015, securing $300 million with an estimated value exceeding $1 billion. The completion of this financing round meant that Tujia formally entered the $1 billion club composed of “unicorn” Internet companies. In June 2016, it announced the strategic M&A of Mayi; in October 2016, it announced its strategic agreement with Ctrip.com and Qunar.com for the M&A of their apartment and homestay businesses. The completion of these transactions manifested the matrix with the four major platforms Tujia, Mayi, Ctrip, and Qunar. Since then, Tujia has become the absolute pacesetter in China's online accommodations-sharing sector.

This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of online vacation rentals (OVRs) (a new source of e-business travel growth) and how the concept of sense of place is presented by tourists' online reviews.

The initial assumption for this exploratory study is that OVRs bring both material and intangible advantages to the individual consumer and to the community of homeowners. Using a qualitative approach, within the conceptual framework of a sense of place, multidimensional meanings presented by tourists' online reviews of their travel experience and home rentals were explored.

The findings point to a sense of place constructed through affordances of place, home and a functional sense of place. They seem to indicate that these testimonials come from a close-knit virtual community; although the site is open to all, it is primarily used by British-to-British. The data reveal neither any salient expression of social interaction between these tourists and the local community nor any references to the cultural context, thus pointing to the dimensions of security and familiarity and to the absence of any travelling-to-learn motivation.

It remains unclear whether sense of place, as defined here, is the outcome of the limitations induced by the channel and textual genre. Future research on this virtual community, via interviews and questionnaires, could clarify this question.

The analysis of this new form of tourism and the innovative design of this research, based on textual analysis of free elicited data, are the main contributions of this paper.

The purpose of this study was to investigate travelers’ preferences for peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations or hotels when traveling for leisure or business purposes given the rise of P2P accommodations in the form of Airbnb, Vacation Rentals by Owners (VRBO) One Fine Stay, etc.

VRBO hosts in Denver, Colorado, USA provided contact information for 788 travelers who stayed with them over the prior three years. These travelers received an email survey and the opportunity to be entered in a drawing for one of three US$250 gift cards.

P2P usage was driven by leisure travel. The most influential factors in the choice of P2P over hotel were price, location, party size, dwelling size and trip length. When choosing a hotel for business travel, the influential factors were location, safety and security, price and knowing what one will receive in the way of facility and services.

The external validity of the findings is limited as the study was conducted in one US city using travelers of only one P2P accommodations platform.

Hotels may want to leverage their loyalty programs and stress the importance of safety and security when traveling as a means of competing with P2P accommodations.

Given limited empirical research on P2P accommodations, this study provides an informative first look at the preferences and behaviors of travelers using P2P accommodations and points to a growing loyalty to P2P accommodations versus hotels in the leisure segment.

To tackle one of the main negative consequences of the sharing economy, namely, the growth of the informal sector, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate for the first time the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry and then to discuss what needs to be done to prevent the further growth of the informal sector in this industry.

To evaluate the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry, data are reported from 30 East European and Central Asian countries collected in 2013 in the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey.

The finding is that 23 per cent of hotels and restaurants in Eastern Europe and Central Asia report competing against unregistered or informal operators, and 13 per cent view these informal competitors as a major or severe obstacle. The larger the business, the greater is the likelihood that the informal sector is considered their biggest obstacle.

To prevent the further growth of the informal sector in the hospitality industry, regulation of the sharing economy will be required. To achieve this, it is shown that state authorities need to adopt both direct control measures that alter the costs of operating in the informal sector and the benefits and ease of operating formally, as well as indirect control measures that reduce the acceptability of operating in the informal sector.

This is the first paper to evaluate the impacts of the informal sector on the hospitality industry and to outline the policy measures required to prevent its further growth with the advent of the sharing economy.

This study aims to investigate a sharing economy context, where vacation rental units that are owned and operated by individuals throughout the world are rented out through a common website: vrbo.com. It is posited that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, a common indicator of the level of economic development of a nation, will impact the likelihood that prospective travelers will choose to book accommodations in the sharing economy channel (vs traditional hotels). The role of online customer reviews in this process is investigated as well, building upon a significant body of extant research which shows their level of customer decision influence.

An empirical analysis is conducted using data from the website Vacation Rentals By Owner on 1,940 rental listings across 97 countries.

GDP per capita serves as risk deterrent to prospective travelers, making the sharing economy an acceptable alternative to traditional hotels for the average traveler. It is also found that the total number of online customer reviews (OCR volume) is a signal of popularity to prospective travelers, while the average star rating of those online customer reviews (OCR valence) is instead a signal of accommodation quality.

This study adds to a growing agenda of research investigating the effect of online customer reviews on consumer decisions, with a particularly focus on the burgeoning sharing economy. The findings help to explain when the sharing economy may serve as a stronger disruptive threat to incumbent offerings. It also provides the following key insights for managers: sharing economy rental units in developed nations are more successful in driving booking activity, managers should look to promote volume of online customer reviews and positive online customer reviews are particularly influential for sharing economy rental booking rates in less developed nations.

San Francisco started regulating short-term vacation rentals on rooms/apartments/houses located within city limits in September 2019. The objectives of this conceptual-scenario and regression study are to calculate the present value of the net earnings for a short-term residential rental property located in San Francisco pre-regulation and post-regulation, and consider a financial reason motivating households to list properties as short-term rentals.

A present value approach is used to estimate the value of rental space to tourists prior to the passage of San Francisco's short-term rental regulations compared to post-rental rules. Table 2 shows pre- and post-income scenarios. Price increases of +20, +40 and +60 percent over the initial base rate failed to restore host earnings to pre-registration levels. The present value model calculates the net revenue less net cost associated with listing a property. The regression model uses the number of listings as the dependent variable, and housing prices divided by weekly wages as independent variables.

The short-term rental regulations significantly reduce the profitability associated with short-term tourist stays offered by hosts and listed by online platforms. A host earns pre-regulation income when average daily rents increase by approximately 71.5 percent. It will likely limit income earned by hosts and Airbnb and other shared housing website platforms due to the reduced number of rental days allowed for shared housing caused by ordinances and host enrollment restrictions. The regression model results suggest that homeowners were listing properties for rent to help cover higher priced property purchases.

Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and HomeAway are all private companies; this means that financial information is not publicly available. HomeAway, VRBO, and Booking.com are companies owned by Expedia. FlipKey is owned by TripAdvisor. Due to limited public information regarding income statements and property listing trends, regression analysis and descriptive statistics cannot be generated using audited financial statements.

Rent control restriction frequently sets the maximum price below the market-clearing price, which results in limited supply but increase in demand for housing. The San Francisco regulations outlaw second-home rentals and seriously limit the availability of other rentals to tourists. FlipKey and HomeAway tend to rent second homes, which San Francisco now bars from being rented for short-term.

The San Francisco restrictions were enacted with the goal of increasing the supply of rental housing available to permanent residents by restricting short-term rentals. This may have limited short-term benefits to permanent residents, but in the long term lowers income associated with single-family housing which will encourage housing arrangements that would avoid leasing restrictions and lower the number of new houses built. Other cities also have a history of rent controls, and are experiencing housing shortages and at the same time attracting large numbers of tourists. These cities may be motivated to enact similar rental restrictions as those approved in San Francisco.

These short-term rental restrictions just started being implemented and enforced. A court decision upheld them. There were media reports outlining the restrictions, but enforcement has just started, so no research papers have been written about San Francisco. Prior research studies have not used net present value analysis to calculate the loss to the host by enacted ordinances restricting tourists’ length of stay and have neither tried to explain why homeowners are listing properties for short-term rentals.

This content analysis of 62 local news stories from seven US locations published between March 1 and June 30, 2020, reveals how the migration of seasonal residents and short-term renters into leisure and nature-focused amenity-rich settings during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the social meaning of home for year-round and seasonal or part-time residents. Four themes emerge relating to (a) local economies; (b) health and safety; (c) local government; and (d) insiders and outsiders. These themes are connected to each other in the larger explanatory story of second home real estate morality projects, defined as dilemmas, deliberations, and conflicting considerations made by individual and group stakeholders in the evaluation of acquisition, use, meaning, and dispossession of properties meant for residential use beyond the primary residence. Findings reveal that moral considerations of deservedness and citizenship among local residents and short-term residents are framed as deep and incompatible concerns surrounding economic stability and public health. This COVID-19-induced moral framing of the interplay between economic, health, and social concerns is situated in a cultural-relational analysis of marketplaces, using Viviana Zelizer’s (2005) “connected lives” approach to understanding how everyday economic interactions among and within families and neighborhoods are imbued with social and cultural meaning even in a time of crisis.