Hotels Need to Watch Out for Airbnb and HomeAway on Peak Nights


Skift Take

It's still a little too early to call this, but it's understandable why Airbnb and other alternative accommodations providers can have an advantage on peak nights: their supply is flexible, whereas the number of hotel rooms is not.
A new report from Morgan Stanley Research suggests that alternative accommodations providers like Airbnb and HomeAway might be having an impact on hotel business in the top 25 lodging markets in the U.S. as defined by STR. Analysts reviewed STR data regarding compression nights, or high-demand nights where market-wide occupancy levels are 95% or more. They found that this year there have been fewer compression nights than in 2015, after years of increasing compression nights, year over year. Through May 28, 2016, there have been 64 compression nights, a 24% decrease from 2015. Last year, during the same period, there were 84 compression nights. "The number of compression nights in the top 25 markets was continuing to grow in 2015," said Thomas Allen, executive director of equity research for Morgan Stanley and one of the report'