IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/empiri/v50y2023i3d10.1007_s10663-023-09576-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of COVID-19 on the European short-term rental market

Author

Listed:
  • E. Guglielminetti

    (Bank of Italy, Directorate General for Economics, Statistics and Research)

  • M. Loberto

    (Bank of Italy, Directorate General for Economics, Statistics and Research)

  • A. Mistretta

    (Bank of Italy, Directorate General for Economics, Statistics and Research)

Abstract

The diffusion of COVID-19 and related containment measures practically halted tourism flows, which in many countries generate a significant share of GDP. By leveraging Airbnb data covering the main touristic destinations in Europe, we investigate the impact of the pandemic on the market for short-term rentals up to early 2021. We find that the epidemic reduced dramatically both the supply of apartments available for rents and customers’ demand, with travellers cancelling many reservations and reducing new bookings even many months in advance. Accommodations relying relatively more on foreign tourism were the hardest hit and reacted by cutting prices. By exploiting the different timing of the epidemic spread across Europe and the timelines and intensity of the measures adopted to contain it, we show that government mandated restrictions had a stronger impact than the spread of the infection itself. All in all, our results point to a persistent and heterogeneous impact of COVID-19 on the accommodation industry.

Suggested Citation

  • E. Guglielminetti & M. Loberto & A. Mistretta, 2023. "The impact of COVID-19 on the European short-term rental market," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 585-623, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:empiri:v:50:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10663-023-09576-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s10663-023-09576-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10663-023-09576-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10663-023-09576-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Weber, Michael, 2020. "The Cost of the COVID-19 Crisis: Lockdowns, Macroeconomic Expectations, and Consumer Spending," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt4jn1x65h, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    2. Moll, Benjamin & Kaplan, Greg & Violante, Giovanni, 2020. "The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the U.S," CEPR Discussion Papers 15256, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Gyódi, Kristóf, 2021. "Airbnb and hotels during COVID-19: different strategies to survive," MPRA Paper 109333, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Valerio Della Corte & Claudio Doria & Giacomo Oddo, 2023. "The impact of COVID‐19 on international tourism flows to Italy: Evidence from mobile phone data," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1378-1407, May.
    5. Goolsbee, Austan & Syverson, Chad, 2021. "Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    6. Asger Lau Andersen & Emil Toft Hansen & Niels Johannesen & Adam Sheridan, 2020. "Pandemic, Shutdown and Consumer Spending: Lessons from Scandinavian Policy Responses to COVID-19," Papers 2005.04630, arXiv.org.
    7. Daniel Guttentag, 2015. "Airbnb: disruptive innovation and the rise of an informal tourism accommodation sector," Current Issues in Tourism, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(12), pages 1192-1217, December.
    8. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    9. Felipe Lozano Rojas & Xuan Jiang & Laura Montenovo & Kosali I. Simon & Bruce A. Weinberg & Coady Wing, 2020. "Is the Cure Worse than the Problem Itself? Immediate Labor Market Effects of COVID-19 Case Rates and School Closures in the U.S," NBER Working Papers 27127, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valerio Della Corte & Claudio Doria & Giacomo Oddo, 2023. "The impact of COVID‐19 on international tourism flows to Italy: Evidence from mobile phone data," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(5), pages 1378-1407, May.
    2. Luigi Infante & Francesca Lilla & Francesco Vercelli, 2023. "The effects of the pandemic on households' financial savings: a Bayesian structural VAR analysis," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1421, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2021. "Japan’s voluntary lockdown: further evidence based on age-specific mobile location data," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 72(3), pages 333-370, July.
    2. Nashwan M. A. Saif & Jianping Ruan & Bojan Obrenovic, 2021. "Sustaining Trade during COVID-19 Pandemic: Establishing a Conceptual Model Including COVID-19 Impact," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-20, May.
    3. Bisin, Alberto & Moro, Andrea, 2022. "Spatial‐SIR with network structure and behavior: Lockdown rules and the Lucas critique," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 370-388.
    4. Horvath, Akos & Kay, Benjamin & Wix, Carlo, 2023. "The COVID-19 shock and consumer credit: Evidence from credit card data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    5. Mario J. Crucini & Oscar O'Flaherty, 2020. "Stay-at-Home Orders in a Fiscal Union," NBER Working Papers 28182, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2020. "Japan’s Voluntary Lockdown," CARF F-Series CARF-F-492, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    7. Dergiades, Theologos & Milas, Costas & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2022. "Unemployment claims during COVID-19 and economic support measures in the U.S," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    8. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2020. "Japan’s Voluntary Lockdown," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 027, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    9. Indervir Singh & Jagdeep Singh & Ashapurna Baruah, 2020. "Income and Employment Changes Under COVID-19 Lockdown: A Study of Urban Punjab," Millennial Asia, , vol. 11(3), pages 391-412, December.
    10. Tsutomu Watanabe & Tomoyoshi Yabu, 2021. "Japan’s Voluntary Lockdown: Further Evidence Based on Age-Specific Mobile Location Data," CARF F-Series CARF-F-508, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    11. Wright, Austin L. & Sonin, Konstantin & Driscoll, Jesse & Wilson, Jarnickae, 2020. "Poverty and economic dislocation reduce compliance with COVID-19 shelter-in-place protocols," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 544-554.
    12. Staples, Aaron J. & Deming, Kristopher & Malone, Trey & Carpenter, Craig W. & Weiler, Stephan, 2024. "Pouring the Paycheck Protection Program into craft beer: PPP employment effects in service-intensive industries," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    13. John Gathergood & Fabian Gunzinger & Benedict Guttman-Kenney & Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Levelling Down and the COVID-19 Lockdowns: Uneven Regional Recovery in UK Consumer Spending," Papers 2012.09336, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2020.
    14. Dirk Niepelt & Mart n Gonzalez-Eiras, 2020. "Optimally Controlling an Epidemic," Diskussionsschriften dp2019, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    15. Checo Ariadne & Grigoli Francesco & Mota Jose M., 2022. "Assessing Targeted Containment Policies to Fight COVID-19," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 159-196, January.
    16. Martin Bodenstein & Giancarlo Corsetti & Luca Guerrieri, 2022. "Social distancing and supply disruptions in a pandemic," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(2), pages 681-721, May.
    17. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Giorgio Fabbri & Salvatore Federico & Davide Fiaschi & Fausto Gozzi, 2024. "Mobility decisions, economic dynamics and epidemic," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 77(1), pages 495-531, February.
    19. Allen N. Berger & Christa H. S. Bouwman & Lars Norden & Raluca A. Roman & Gregory F. Udell & Teng Wang, 2024. "Piercing through Opacity: Relationships and Credit Card Lending to Consumers and Small Businesses during Normal Times and the COVID-19 Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 132(2), pages 484-551.
    20. van Wijnbergen, Sweder, 2022. "Lockdowns as options," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID-19; Lockdown; Airbnb; Tourism; Heckman model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L83 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Sports; Gambling; Restaurants; Recreation; Tourism
    • L85 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Real Estate Services
    • R20 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - General
    • R30 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - General
    • Z30 - Other Special Topics - - Tourism Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:empiri:v:50:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10663-023-09576-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.