Market for Peer-to-Peer Accommodation in Australia

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Hotel and Accommodation Management

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Executive Summary
The report outlines the market for peer-to-peer accommodation or P2PA in the Australian region.
It outlines the tourist trend regarding availing of facilities in the P2PA facilities rendered by
companies like Airbnb compared to other hospitality firms operating in the region. Further, the
report also reflects on the potential challenges in terms of increased competition rendered by the
P2PA sector on the existing hospitality market and the counter measures that are focused on
being undertaken by the government and urban planning bodies in such regions to counter the
impact of the competitive pressures.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Industry Overview of the Accommodation Sector in Australia......................................................4
Current issues faced by Accommodation Services..........................................................................7
Conclusions......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The emergence of the concept of shared economy amongst different sectors has led to the growth
of peer-to-peer accommodation (P2PA) market to effectively flourish along the tourism regions
on an international basis (OECD, 2017, p.86). Companies like Airbnb tend to potentially
challenge the operations of the current hospitality sector along different Australian regions
thereby requiring the state tourism and urban planning bodies to focus on undertaking new
policies (Murphy, 2017). The report focuses on providing an effective overview of the P2PA
sector in Australia along with the challenges rendered by it.
Industry Overview of the Accommodation Sector in Australia
The peer-to-peer or P2P based accommodation (P2PA) industry gains due significance in
Australia owing to the fact that the sector potentially contributes for the growth of Australian
tourism. During 2017, the accommodation sector of Australia recorded a growth of around 7
percent in terms of reaching a value of AUD7 billion. The growing importance of the shared
economy in the Australian context can be figured out based on large scale participation of the
Australian consumers in that during 2015 (World Bank Group , 2018). The management of
Airbnb, acting as one of the potential platforms fuelling the growth of P2PA industry in Australia
notes that on a per capita basis larger numbers of Australians are observed to be using the
company’s services. In that, the Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne ranked 5th and 6th
respectively in Airbnb’s list of regions encompassing significant numbers of users. However,
another independent research firm reflected that the existence of the P2PA platforms do not
impose a threat on the traditional hospitality industry in the region (Dolnicar, 2018). Other