Hotel and Accommodation Management: A Study on Airbnb's Challenges

This report provides an overview of Airbnb and its impact on the hotel and accommodation management industry, highlighting its transformation into a significant player in the market. It discusses Airbnb's business model, focusing on connecting hosts with travelers and its presence in Australia, where it has a substantial user base. The report also addresses accommodation issues such as property damage, safety concerns, and regulatory challenges faced by Airbnb, including varying local regulations and tax implications. It emphasizes the importance of trust, safety measures, and the need for Airbnb to address these challenges to maintain its reputation and facilitate future growth. Desklib offers a variety of study tools and resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in their academic endeavors.

0Running head : HOTEL AND ACCOMODATION MANAGEMENT
HOTEL AND ACCOMODATION MANAGEMENT
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Industry Overview: AIRBNB
An online society marketplace, connecting people who are interested in renting their
homes with people who are looking for accommodation .The users of Airbnb includes hosts and
travelers; the host lists their homes in Airbnb and rent out their unused places, accordingly guest
searches and book for accommodation in many countries worldwide. Airbnb has transformed
officially from accommodation minnow to a massive in less than five years, with trending
features revealing the allotment platform is on the edge of turning above $1 billion per year in
Australia (Ikkala and Lampinen 2015) .Airbnb stands for Airbed and breakfast. Airbnb allows
the guest to get access to entire place including a bathroom, bedroom and a kitchen. Airbnb is
Australian ideal place for guest. According to the co-founder of Airbnb Joe Gebbia tells it, “that
it feels good to pay taxes”. Its focus is to introduce regulation and keeps the neighbor happy,
shows interest in working with local government and the part of the society and helps in saving
mortgage people’s homes. Sam McDonough the manager of Airbnb’s New Zealand and
Australia said: “More than two third of listings in the platform shares their home in Australia”.
Airbnb hosts does not requires any national rule for paying extra tax in case they are living in a
place frequently visited, this comes under the responsibility of state government and local
council (Summers 2016). The property of Australian Airbnb has experienced 4.6 million arrivals
over the precedent year. Australia has been registered as the leading country with users for every
capita of any country — one fifth of every Australian holds account in Airbnb. Till date its being
listed that there are 122,500 active listings and around 4.8 million Airbnb users— there is an
increase with 40 per cent over preceding years (Palombo 2015). The Airbnb is always in talks
among people as they do not need to pay the tax, but as earlier, the co founder said, they love to
pay taxes. Airbnb’s holds partnership with 340 cities all over the world, and this countries

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regulations include causative to taxes collected, this taxes are collected by hosts in regarding
with the facilities provided to the guests (Oskam and Boswijk 2016). For the past year, Airbnb
has offered a service where locals can offer experiences to visitors, such as walking tours
or home-cooked meals. He said one woman overseas had made $15,000 in a matter of
months, and that some who offered visitor experiences had become involved because
they did not have accommodation to rent on the platform (Zervas, Proserpio, and Byers
2017).
Accommodation issues
There are many challenges faced by Airbnb despite the benefits, there arises concerns
for both guests and hosts. One of the major risks with accommodating guest is that they may
cause damage to their property. Many incidents state that the entire house is being trashed, when
the hosts of Airbnb thought that they were renting to a quiet housing family, also there were
instance when host came home and found things were stolen from their place and the rooms are
being littered with meth pipes. In some countries Airbnb states that there is no charges going to
be imposed on the guest for damaging the property, but there is a protection allocated up to
$1,000,000, if any damage occurs heavy then the guest need to pay this amount, this is only for
few countries (Brochado , Troilo and Shah 2017). There is a host program that guarantees some,
terms and conditions that can be applied on the things after damage. This is a big relief for host,
but it is necessary for the host to read all the terms, conditions carefully, and understands them
fully and the steps required to be taken by the host to seek for payment under host program. In
addition to this, hosts should recognize their renters, homeowner’s, and umbrella insurance

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coverage, and should concern with a capable cover agent if there is any questions or concerns
regarding to this. From the end of the guest, the major concern arises with the deal, that the
description does not matches the property. Sometimes the guest feels disappointed, as the host is
not at all responsive towards their needs (Guttentag 2015). There was a case in European country
where a man rented his house through Airbnb, when the guest arrived; they found the owner was
someone different. It is the responsibility of both the guest and host to avoid such risks by using
Airbnb features and users should use verified IDs, profiles, reviews, messaging and secure
payment transaction. There is a safety issue in the houses for the rent. As there is no strict rules
and regulation and the host is not under any pressure to follow any set of rules .But the security
provided by the hotels are high and they need to follow the rules strictly (Zekanovic-Korona and
Grzunov 2014). Therefore, Airbnb host has full access to his property and they may have their
own friend’s party in presence of the guest. In addition, the guest cannot do anything about this;
they have to stay with them it. This may end all the privacy of the guest and the holiday will go
waste. In recent times, stories came up stating that, in some Airbnb hosts are found using hidden
cameras and trying to sneak into others privacy. If at any point any odd looking object it may
appear to be a hidden camera, and the host must be watching all the moves. In cities like New
York the scenario of Airbnb is bit different as the New York governor Andrew signed a petition
which states that it is illegal to rent the houses for lesser than 30 days , unless and until the host
was present(Edelman and Geradin 2015). Some areas of United States have made some
agreement that states, rents for short time is illegal or somehow restricted. Iceland has
made rules regarding this rentals, that no one can rent houses for short term, and in case
the days rented becomes more than 90 days then that year will require a special license.
In addition, in Amsterdam, it is 60 days limit. Thus, Airbnb needs to overcome these

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issues on urgent basis, so that they can expand and can maintain the reputation (Edelman
and Luca 2014).

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Reference
Brochado, A., Troilo, M. and Shah, A., 2017. Airbnb customer experience: Evidence of
convergence across three countries. Annals of Tourism Research, 63(C), pp.210-212.
Edelman, B.G. and Geradin, D., 2015. Efficiencies and regulatory shortcuts: How should we
regulate companies like Airbnb and Uber. Stan. Tech. L. Rev., 19, p.293.
Edelman, B.G. and Luca, M., 2014. Digital discrimination: The case of Airbnb. com.
Ert, E., Fleischer, A. and Magen, N., 2016. Trust and reputation in the sharing economy: The
role of personal photos in Airbnb. Tourism Management, 55, pp.62-73.
Gurran, N. and Phibbs, P., 2017. When tourists move in: how should urban planners respond to
Airbnb?. Journal of the American planning association, 83(1), pp.80-92.
Guttentag, D., 2015. Airbnb: disruptive innovation and the rise of an informal tourism
accommodation sector. Current issues in Tourism, 18(12), pp.1192-1217.
Ikkala, T. and Lampinen, A., 2015, February. Monetizing network hospitality: Hospitality and
sociability in the context of Airbnb. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on computer
supported cooperative work & social computing (pp. 1033-1044). ACM.

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Oskam, J. and Boswijk, A., 2016. Airbnb: the future of networked hospitality
businesses. Journal of Tourism Futures, 2(1), pp.22-42.
Palombo, D., 2015. A tale of two cities: the regulatory battle to incorporate short-term residential
rentals into modern law. Am. U. Bus. L. Rev., 4, p.287.
Summers, L.H., 2016. The age of secular stagnation: What it is and what to do about it. Foreign
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Zekanovic-Korona, L. and Grzunov, J., 2014, May. Evaluation of shared digital economy
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Zervas, G., Proserpio, D. and Byers, J.W., 2017. The rise of the sharing economy: Estimating the
impact of Airbnb on the hotel industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 54(5), pp.687-705.