Sharing Economy: The Relationship between Airbnb, the Accommodation Industry and New Tourist Flows. The Case of Bologna Metropolitan Area (Italy)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between tourist accommodations managed through sharing-economy portals and the tourist facilities professionally managed (typically hotels) in terms of direct and indirect competition. Moreover, the analysis of the turnover associated with different kinds of facilities bookable on Airbnb, the most widely used sharing-economy portal for tourism, allow to assess the ratio of “core sharing” (the sharing-economy in its proper meaning) in Airbnb business and to estimate new tourist flows brought about by the portal. The analysis has been carried out for the metropolitan area of Bologna (Italy) in the years 2015-18.This work shows that only 20% of the turnover recorded by Airbnb in Bologna metro area can be associated to “pure” sharing-economy, meanwhile the remaining 80% have various levels of professional management that, in many cases (though not all), undermine the peer-to-peer nature of the relationship established between the parties involved (peer-to-peer relationship is a must of proper sharing-economy). Of this 80% of turnover, while 44% is associated with facilities that can be considered in direct competition with hotels, 36% is made by tourist accommodations that, to a various degrees, play indirect competition with hotels, thus activating new tourist flows towards Bologna metro area.