New Data on Airbnb in Phoenix Takes Aim at Arizona’s Pro-Sharing Economy Stance
Photo Credit: According to Airbnb, it had approximately 5,000 hosts in the state of Arizona in 2015. Airbnb
Skift Take
While it's pretty clear that the hotel industry and Airbnb are at odds with one another, it's still obvious that more transparent data is sorely needed to understand the true impact of Airbnb and other home sharing platforms on cities and communities.
Most of the Airbnb hosts in Phoenix, Arizona — about 85 percent — could be operating illegal hotels, and generating nearly 98 percent, or $41.25 million, of Airbnb's $42.21 million in total revenue for the region, according to new data released by Penn State University's School of Hospitality Management.
The data comes from a study originally commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), one the largest organizations in the U.S. representing hotels, management companies, and other parts of the hospitality industry. With this in mind, it's worth noting that AH&LA isn't the most impartial of organizations in the fight against home sharing platforms such as Airbnb. For this study, Penn State examined numbers from Airdna and its research partner, Kalibri Labs, which looked at Airbnb operators, revenues, and listings from October 2014 to September 2015.
Earlier this year, AH&LA and Penn State released Phase I of the report, which noted that nea
