The collaborative economy based analysis of demand: study of airbnb case in Spain and Portugal

Abstract

The rise of the collaborative economy has just started to become a reality in the economy of the countries in the European Union. The aim of this article is to use Goal - Question - Metric methodology to verify that the rise of Internet searches has an impact on collaborative economy. Specifically, Airbnb was the collaborative economy service analyzed. The demonstration was carried out with a statistical analysis of the Internet searches, looking at their evolution in Spain, Portugal and USA over the past 10 years. A working hypothesis was also defined to test whether the demand for information about Airbnb has a positive influence on the total spending of tourists who booked apartments in Spain during the period between July 2015 and August 2016. The results lead us to make a projection of growth for Airbnb service in the coming years. The case studied is very representative of this economic model, even though there is a large number of lesser-known websites. Finally, the results corroborate previous studies that defend that tools for studying trends and correlations of search terms are techniques that help decision making in studies and market research.