Short-term rental versus small hotel industry amid COVID-19 pandemic: What drives millennials’ accommodation choices?

Abstract

This paper aims to establish the motivation factors behind the accommodation choices made by millennials for stays at short-term rental properties and small hotels amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, a topic that remains under-represented in the hospitality and tourism literature. Using data from a survey of 145 millennials who stayed at an Airbnb property and a small hotel in the past year, a non-parametric test was utilized to compare six motivation factors that affect millennials’ accommodation choices, guided by the push-pull motivational framework. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test results showed that the millennials significantly considered price and reviews as their common pull motivations when making accommodation choices. Interestingly, motivation factors such as location, service quality, facilities and amenities, safety, and security do not appear to significantly influence the millennials’ choices for either accommodation. This paper contributes to the limited pool of empirical research on short-term rental properties and addresses the challenges faced by the small hotel industry by focusing on millennials’ accommodation choices.