In the last 10 years the hospitality industry has evolved significantly, and an increasing number of travellers are now favouring the unique experience and personal charm of staying in shared accommodation over traditional hotels.
Accommodation is the number one expense for both business and leisure travellers, topping the price of transport by 25% and dining by 40%. In the last 10 years the hospitality industry has evolved significantly, and an increasing number of travellers are now favouring the unique experience and personal charm of staying in shared accommodation* over traditional hotels. Additionally, millennials are taking a greater share of the market, helping hostels grow at a faster pace than the hotel industry.
GoEuro has undertaken an impartial price index study of 150 cities** and over 60,000 properties to analyse the price effect on the industry and how this affects travellers. With the traveller in mind, we have not factored local purchasing power into the calculations*** in order to reflect real world prices. (This is not a comparison of different types of accommodation, but is instead a price ranking of the cities listed.)
* The Airbnb price should not be compared to hotel prices within the same city, as the factors we used only reflect a segment of the available offerings. To calculate the Airbnb price we averaged the median cost of booking an entire property for 2 and 4 people over a range from June 1 – December 31, 2014 to include high and low season periods. We collected data directly from the Airbnb website for over 40,000 properties across 150 cities.
** Cities were chosen based on several factors. For cities outside of Europe, we selected based on population, size of hospitality industry, and number and availability of 1-4 star hotels. Additionally, for cities within Europe, we factored in the volume of inbound transport bookings on GoEuro over the past 12 months.
*** Our formula is based on the average cost of a hotel room, a hostel bed and an Airbnb property in each city. All prices converted from local currency to Euro using the Bloomberg exchange on Monday, November 17.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
