Is Accommodation ‘Sharing’ Disrupting the Regional Housing Market?

This presentation explores the role of an accommodation sharing platform, AirBnB, which is seen as a disrupter to conventional accommodation providers and housing markets in many regions worldwide. We focus on New Zealand, showing a snapshot in time of both the scale and spatial distribution of the accommodation provided through this platform. We have blended AirBnB data collected by the research team, with New Zealand (NZ) Census data 2013. This allows us to begin exploring information from the 2013 NZ Census in combination with the AirBnB data to determine some of the wider impacts of this phenomenon on populations and places. Moreover, using exploratory spatial analysis we can uncover the spatial patterning of this disruptive accommodation sharing phenomenon. As we might expect, the traditional regional tourism destinations in NZ, Queenstown or the Coromandel peninsula for example, are areas with ‘hotspots’ of AirBnBs provided, but other places emerge as well. This phenomenon, accommodation sharing, poses challenges to the local authorities who collect local taxes (rates) usually based on the value of the property, with several local councils (e.g. Auckland, Christchurch) proposing or enacting specific legislation in order to better regulate and capture revenue from accommodation provided by such platforms. The longer term aim of this project is to more fully understand the social consequences for vulnerable communities and the effects on the housing market and housing affordability more broadly. The project forms part of a larger research endeavour funded by the National Science Challenge: building better homes towns and citie