Category: Technology, Trends, and Data Analytics

Airbnb and the Hotel Industry: The Past, Present, and Future of Sales, Marketing, Branding, and Revenue Management

By Makarand Mody and Monica Gomez For a long time, the hotel industry did not consider Airbnb a threat. Both the industry and Airbnb claimed they were serving different markets and had different underlying business models. Over the years, as Airbnb become more successful and grown to being larger than the companies in the hotel […]

Blockchain Technology & its Implications for the Hospitality Industry

By Tarik Dogru, Makarand Mody, & Christie Leonardi “A world with little or no intermediaries where there is no need to build trust between people and transactions are completed in seconds. This is the promise of the Blockchain Technology.” -Tarik Dogru Blockchain technology and its economic, social, and technological implications, mainly in the form of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, […]

Comparing apples and oranges? Examining the impacts of Airbnb on hotel performance in Boston

By Tarik Dogru, Makarand Mody, and Courtney Suess If you are in the hotel industry, chances are that Airbnb has come up in conversation at some point or another. The sharing economy phenomenon and the economic, social, and technological changes fueling its growth have challenged the hotel industry to rethink its experiential value proposition to […]

Hotel Brand Websites, OTA’s, Meta Search and Wholesalers: A Distribution Dilemma Within The Industry

By Nick Cohen The year is 2001, and the world is still recovering from the tragedy of September 11th.  The travel industry is in a downward spiral as fears of flying and terrorism ripple across the United States and beyond, and hotels have lost significant occupancy due to a decrease in demand. Simultaneously, a fledgling […]

What do guests value most in Airbnb accommodations? An application of the hedonic pricing approach

By Tarik Dogru and Osman Pekin The sharing economy has become a major phenomenon; Airbnb, Uber, ZipCar, Kickstarter and many more comprise the rapidly expanding list of pioneers in the world of the sharing economy. This new concept has introduced an alternative platform for consumers, widely known as peer-to-peer marketplace, in which participants are motivated […]

Hospitality Branding in the Age of the Millennial

By Allen Adamson and Chekitan S. Dev The Exponential Growth in Both Hospitality Brands and the Millennial Audience Requires an Exponential Shift in Brand Portfolio Strategy The past decade has seen exponential growth in hospitality brands making for an often confounding proliferation of options for travelers. According to Smith Travel Research, from hard to soft, […]