Who doesn’t know Airbnb? It’s a widely known marketplace that almost everyone uses when they travel to different places. When Airbnb was found several years ago, it immediately changed and disrupted the hospitality industry. For your information, Airbnb is an online marketplace where people can canvas and look for affordable hotel rooms available in every different country’s hottest travel spots. Airbnb covers more than 100,000 cities and 220 countries worldwide, which is pretty huge providing a huge convenience to tourists and travelers.

Travelers and tourists find Airbnb a blessing because looking for accommodations is never easy. Plus, Airbnb is very accessible to use and very affordable because they don’t have to pay through the roof to get a roof over their heads on any occasion. Airbnb will come in handy, especially during peak seasons in cities with limited room availability, such as New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. It is a good alternative when there is less room available that is more expensive than the price of a normal room.

Airbnb may sound like a blessing for us tourists, but hotel owners or the hospitality industry itself aren’t thrilled. Traditionally, big hotels earn generous margins when rooms were scarce, and customers have no choice but to pay higher rates. Researchers found out that the existence of Airbnb resulted in 1.3 percent fewer hotel nights booked and a 1.5 percent loss in hotel revenue.

Airbnb’s dominance may change the traditional booking and rent off hotels and houses, but the hotel industry is not just sitting back and waiting to be noticed again. Hotels are expanding their business models and services and try competing with Airbnb’s current success.

However, not all hotel accommodators are embracing the platform used by Airbnb because some customers prefer traditional hotel booking over Airbnb. Most of them don’t have much choice but to use the platform, especially during holidays or peak seasons when there are limited rooms available in specific cities. Plus, a booking in Airbnb doesn’t always equal a booking lost by the hotel industry but, it is cutting hotel profits by up to 3.7 percent.

Airbnb indeed changed the hotel industry in many ways. However, the most important thing is it gave a lot of people more accessible and affordable ways to find a place to stay whenever they need it.