Hotel industry competitive responses against Airbnb: A case study of hotels vs. Airbnb in Helsinki

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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business | Master's thesis
Date
2018
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Strategy
Language
en
Pages
97+34
Series
Abstract
Airbnb is widely regarded as one of the most successful sharing economy innovations in the accommodation services industry. The online home-sharing platform has registered over 300 million guest arrivals since it started in 2008. With presence in over 191 countries worldwide, the nearly 5 million listings on the platform eclipse the room capacity of the top five hotel brands in the world combined. The exponential growth of Airbnb has surprised many market spectators including hotel executives that have largely dismissed the new competitor. The emergent academic research on Airbnb has established that Airbnb poses a disruptive threat to the hotel industry, given that it substitutes more low to mid-market stays than previously believed. Hotel competitive responses against Airbnb have remained largely obscured, with lobbying and moderating peak pricing as the most evident competitive responses. The research aim of this thesis was to create new understanding on how hotels compete against Airbnb. A theoretical framework explaining factors influencing competitive response was adopted from the competitive dynamics field and supplemented with other research streams from strategic management literature. This study employed a single case study method focused on the hotel market in Helsinki, Finland. Research data was drawn using semi-structured interviews with 13 hotel industry executives from 11 hotel organizations operating in the area. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. This thesis also relied on secondary online data sources for general hotel and Airbnb market data in the area. The findings of this thesis show that hotel organizations in Helsinki have mainly responded to Airbnb by adapting to changing lifestyle and online trends. Executives from leading hotel chains were found to be in a key role in influencing the anti-Airbnb agenda at the national industry association. The booming hotel market in Helsinki was identified as one of the reasons behind executives’ optimism and reduced threat perception on Airbnb. Furthermore, internal orientation and focus on most immediate competitors explained why hotel organizations neglected monitoring Airbnb supply and thus underestimated its scale.
Description
Thesis advisor
Turunen, Taija
Keywords
Airbnb, hotel industry, competitive dynamics, competitive response, disruption
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