Tourism and Sharing Economy: research on Airbnb data

What is the impact of Airbnb in the Veneto region? Researchers of the Department of Economics have explored that question and presented their results in a public encounter dedicated to the ‘non-traditional’ hospitality industry gathering Sharing Economy and digital technology. 4,23 days is the average length of Airbnb users’ stay in Veneto, a longer period of time than guests of ‘traditional’ hospitality structures.

The event in Italian on the “Importance of non-traditional hospitality industry for tourist economy in Veneto” (June 28th, 10am, San Giobbe) will start with the introduction of the report written within the Veneto Observatory on Tourism in 2016 by professors and researchers Jan van der Borg, Dario Bertocchi, Nicola Camatti, Marco Olivi.

A roundtable will gather Gianangelo Bellati (Unioncamere), Nicola Callegaro (City of Venice), Tommaso Bortoluzzi (Associazione dei bed&breakfast, affittacamere ed appartamenti del Veneto - ABBAV), Stefan Marchioro (Veneto Region), Elio Dazzo (Chamber of Commerce of Venice, Rovigo and the Laguna delta).

The analysis of Airbnb data allowed professor Jan Van Der Borg’s research team to ‘take a picture’ of the supply and demand of a phenomenon “that has now exploded, evolved and been consolidated in Veneto too”.

The data collection of November 2016 and the previous year showed that: 10.179 inhabitants of Veneto let rooms and entire properties for rent through Airbnb for an average of 131 EUR per day, representing about 9 thousand EUR per day throughout the region.

Van Der Borg comments: “Studying the dimension and the impact of the non-traditional hosting industry brings us inevitably once again to think about competitiveness and sustainability of tourist destinations and to focus on the effective implications on the tourist offer of the Veneto region: Who is this new 2.0 tourist and how do the overnight stay habits - in particular in terms of length - as well as the expenditure and the geographic impact affected?”

Being able to access this large database enabled the extrapolation of the information, covering the gap of official statistics. A specific investigation in collaboration with ABBAV on the supply side confirmed indeed as correct the intuition of interpreting such data as representative of the phenomenon.