Despite Hotel Room Influx, Airbnb Maintains Share of Philly Visitors
As a visitor, you have no shortage of places to stay in Philadelphia. That is true today more than ever before, as four new hotels with 600 rooms have opened up in Center City and University City this year already, with an additional 2,300+ rooms spread between three or four hotels scheduled to become available before January. If you’d rather stay somewhere with that homey touch, however, there is Airbnb. The website connects people with a spare room, apartment, or home with short-term tenants. The number of Airbnb listings in Philadelphia has risen drastically in the past few years, just as it has all over the rest of the United States. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “In the Philadelphia metropolitan area, about 3,000 Airbnb listings are available on any given day, up from 700 at the end of 2014, said Tony Biddle of CBRE Hotels, which provides consulting and research services to the lodging industry.”
More and more hotels are being built in Philadelphia, but competition from Airbnb is keeping things interesting.
Biddle says that 14 percent of all lodgings in Philadelphia are arranged through Airbnb. Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, acknowledges that hotels are really going to have to step up to the plate to keep the industry strong in the face of increased competition. He states that the Association is definitely feeling the impact of Airbnb, but they just can’t be sure how much. Biddle points out that “A portion of Airbnb customers represent new lodging demand. They might not have otherwise traveled to Philadelphia if they could not get a very good rate on Airbnb. It remains largely confined within the leisure segment.”
Numbers are difficult to pin down within the Airbnb sector, where lodgings usually have a 50% occupancy rate. That’s much lower than what is experienced by hotels. The website is making a concerted push to attract more business travelers, who have long stayed exclusively at hotels. It will be interesting to see in the future how the turf war between hotels and Airbnb plays out.
