A game theory approach to Airbnb and hotels competition

The rapid growth of Airbnb listings has represented a challenge for hotels. While most of the existent literature has focused on empirically measuring the impact of Airbnb listings on hotels’ revenues and profitability, the present research is one of the first attempts to develop a theoretical framework based on game theory to model a hotel’s best response in terms of investment to improve the quality of service and pricing strategy. The model results suggest that hotel location, the average value of long-term rental contracts and the density of available apartments influence the hotel strategy.