PEER-TO-PEER ACCOMODATIONS IN BUDAPEST - THE EXPANSION OF AIRBNB

Abstract

It is widely known, that info communication techniques have a great impact on the world economy and one of these manifestations is the sharing economy. The sharing economy basically means that users via an IT platform share their unused capacities (e.g. assets, services, money) on an on-demand basis. In this milieu, such sharing economy firms emerged (such as Uber, Airbnb), which offer solutions for changing consumer habits taking advantage of the opportunities offered by IT. It shows the importance of the sharing economy that over the past 15-year startup companies - following the business model based on sharing –have received more than 11,5 billion dollars in investment and the main players like Uber and Airbnb have become global operators.

In this paper, we study the appearance and spatiality of Airbnb – a sharing economy pioneer offering short term accommodation – in Budapest. We seek to understand how the proliferation of Airbnb is shaping room rates in our study areas (V. and VIII. district), which areas are the most affected and whether there is any spatial concentration.

We performed an internet data query using automated data mining methods and applied GIS-based mapping method to visualize the spatiality of the sharing economy in Budapest to reveal differences in room rates at the selected study areas.