CACTUS CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics 2247-3297 ASE Publishing House Bucharest, Romania 10.24818/CTS/6/2024/1.05 cactus-2024-5 Research Article L83, M10, Z32 The competitive advantage of Airbnb in perception of tourists Sandu Maria-Alexandra sandu4alexandra19@stud.ase.ro Purecel Elena-Mihaela Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania 15 6 2024 6 1 1562024 Copyright © 2024, The Author(s) 2024 The Author(s) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Airbnb has experienced rapid growth, with millions of tourists using its service. This study seeks to identify the main reasons why tourists choose to use the Airbnb platform and its competitive advantages. To this end, online research was conducted with a sample of 49 respondents who have already used this type of service. The main results of the study show that price (53.1%), followed by the flat's facilities (22.4%) and location (20.4%) are the main motives for choosing Airbnb accommodation. When rating the importance of the main features that characterise Airbnb, 67.35% of respondents considered price to be very important and 65.31% rated location the same. In terms of satisfaction, the majority of respondents (59.2%) said they had a very satisfactory experience. Had Airbnb not existed, 53.1% of respondents would have opted for a hotel room. Hotels are therefore a major competitor for Airbnb and the advantages and independence of the services should be maintained or even improved.

 Keywords Airbnb advantage authenticity tourists hotels

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