Peer-To-Peer Accommodation: Drivers and User Profiles

The tourism industry is currently dealing with the impacts of collaborative consumption, with tourists increasingly using peer-to-peer (P2P) services such as Airbnb and Uber. This study aims to extend our knowledge of why P2P accommodation services are not just succeeding, but thriving, from the consumer perspective, and it contributes to an understanding of the reasons for the popularity of P2P accommodation services and how consumer heterogeneity affects consumer choices. In this study, the drivers of P2P accommodation services are examined in order to better understand consumer characteristics and behaviour. Based on a survey of Internet users in Finland, the major drivers affecting the use of P2P accommodation services are the age of consumers, active use of the Internet and online technologies, and the frequency of international travel. Cluster analysis identified two user profiles corresponding to consumer motivations for using P2P accommodation services. The first consumer group uses P2P accommodation services to make their trips more convenient, while the second uses them mostly for social reasons