“Location,
location, location.”
Location
is often perceived as the most important factor when people assess the value of
a home or property. In the lodging industry, location is an essential
attribute of a property and can significantly affect a hotel’s financial
performance.
Airbnb and the broader
home-sharing businesses represent a new form of lodging products. Location is
also a significant, influential factor that affects travelers’ purchasing
decisions of a home-sharing stay.
Recent
research suggests that Airbnb listings are usually found
in such popular locations as tourist attractions and points of interest. When more
Airbnb listings are located in the same neighborhood, the competition will
become more intense.
Intense
competition can be harmful to businesses, especially when they enter a price
war. If that’s the case, why would Airbnb hosts choose to operate
their short-term residential rental businesses in the neighborhood with other existing
listings already? Would it be better if an Airbnb listing is located in a
neighborhood with little competition?
The agglomeration theory
Economists
argue that proximity in location for businesses providing similar services or
products may allow them to profit from the positive externalities in the market.
Such positive externalities include increased demands and production
enhancements.
Consumers,
for example, would like to shop or dine in a neighborhood with many retail
stores and restaurants. Travelers may want to stay in an area with an abundance
of alternatives. When a place is fully booked, they can easily find a nearby
place without starting a new search in a less familiar neighborhood.
In
another case, clustering in a location may help companies gain knowledge and
resource spillover, as well as easy access to specialized labor and resources. It
is not surprising to see that a large number of tech firms choose their
headquarters in Silicon Valley, and many financial firms are located in Manhattan.
The research study
and the research questions
To
assess the agglomeration effect of the home-sharing sector, I worked with two
other researchers, Drs. Karen Xie and Cindy Yoonjoung Heo, on a research
project. We aimed to answer two research questions in our study:
1.
Would
Airbnb listings benefit from agglomeration?
2.
Would
such an agglomeration effect vary based on the service provider’s experience?
That is, is the agglomeration effect uniform across the hosts managing one or
more listings and the hosts with various lengths of tenure?
The data and the
analysis
To
answer the research questions, we built a dataset with three sources of data.
First, we obtained the data through AirDNA on the monthly performance of the
entire Airbnb listings in 201 zip codes of New York City from May 2015 to April
2016. Then, we collected a series of data from the hotels located in the same
zip codes from Expedia as hotels and Airbnb listings are also competing against
one another. Lastly, we included the neighborhood information from the American Community Surveys by the Census
Bureau of the United States.
The
dependent variable is an Airbnb listing’s RevPAN (measured in the logarithm of
the average revenue per available nights in a month). Our independent variables
include Airbnb listing agglomeration (measured in the logarithm of the number
of listings agglomerated in a zip code where the focal listing is located),
host capacity (number of listings simultaneously managed by a host, including
the focal listing), and host tenure (number of months elapsed since the focal
listing’s operator become an Airbnb host), plus other variables.
We
operated the analyses on a stepwise basis. First, we estimated the baseline
model with the primary variables only. Then, we included the groups of control
variables into our estimations.
The results
1.
The
level of agglomeration is positively associated with an Airbnb’s RevPAN. For
each 10% increase of Airbnb supply in the neighborhood, the RevPAN of a listing
would increase by 1.27%.
2.
The
positive effect of agglomeration will decrease as a host manages more listings.
3.
The
hosts with longer tenure can further strengthen the positive effect of
agglomeration on a listing’s revenue performance.
The implications
The
above findings add new empirical evidence to two streams of literature,
including location research in the lodging industry and the ever-growing
research regarding the home-sharing businesses. Practically, our findings are
expected to assist the webmasters of
home-sharing websites,
the entrepreneurs who are running a
short-term residential business, as well as the big hotel
chains
that have already entered the short-term residential rental market, in making
business decisions regarding a home-sharing facility’s location. For instance,
· Proximity in
location should be set as a crucial factor when a home-sharing website displays
the alternative options to the travelers according to their searching/browsing
history.
· The service
providers of home-sharing facilities must pay close attention to such an
agglomeration of production enhancements and spillover demands when they choose
the right locations for the listings.
· Policymakers are
advised to treat multi-unit commercial hosts and single-unit “mom-and-pop”
hosts differently, according to the second finding.
Do
you operate any home-sharing facilities? How critical is location to your
business?
If
you are a traveler who often stays in a home-sharing facility, how will a
listing’s location affect your purchasing decisions?
Note: This post is also available on MultiBriefs.com.
Good afternoon Dr. Kwok,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great post. I myself do not own any home-sharing facilities, but I do have a friend who owns a couple of airb&bs. From her perspective, if the location is a busy tourist area, it does not really matter if there are a lot of other airb&bs in the area. Yes, there are competition, but because the area is so busy you're always going to have someone book it. Some people also look for amenities too like laundry, jacuzzi, or a nice scenery. Her listing is in the heart of Tokyo, Japan and it is near a subway station, convenience stores, and eateries. Therefore, she always has someone booking her Airb&b.
Diana Nguyen HRT3020 section 3
Sarah Navarro- HRT 3020 Sec. 1
ReplyDeleteThis was a really interesting post! I had my first Airbnb experience about three months ago. It was in the heart of Studio City. It was near restaurants, shops, and Universal Studios. It was a convenient spot. Which is the reason we picked that Airbnb. It was a cute place and not too pricey. I do not own any home-sharing facilities but, I think location is very important. Usually when you're looking for a place to stay, one of your first questions is, "How far is it from ___?". People are usually willing to pay more if the place they are staying at is closer to places they want to go to.
Hello Dr. Kwok,
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was very interesting. I have never stayed at an airbnb before, but it is something that my family and I discuss doing all the time. My entire family really values traveling, and an airbnb might be the most convenient way to travel if we wanted to travel with the whole family because there are so many of us. Location is definitely an important factor for airbnbs because it might be more convenient to be located in an area where many tourists often visit. Locating in a neighborhood with less competition might be a good idea but I think it would be best if it was not too far away from the bigger tourist locations.
Gerardo Felix HRT 3500.01