Airbnb in European cities: Business as usual or true sharing economy?

The main aim of this article is to examine the characteristics of Airbnb networks in the context of the potential impact on local residents and the traditional hotel industry. The analysis is based on a unique dataset that was constructed by the web-scraping of Airbnb listing data and hotel offers available at Booking.com in Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, and Warsaw. The empirical analysis reveals that only a minority of Airbnb listings can be classified as sharing economy services, while commercial offers constitute a significant share of listings on the platform. Although Airbnb facilitates the spread of tourism to areas not covered by the traditional hotel industry, it is also highly concentrated in neighbourhoods that have long attracted travellers, and thus contributes to increasing pressure from tourism. This comparative study also shows that Airbnb and traditional hotels compete for travellers across a wide range of market segments, but the substitutability of their offers is constrained by their complementary relationships in specific city areas. The study addresses crucial research gaps, presents a robust methodology, and provides a detailed market analysis. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.