OK so it’s definitely not causal, at least not the young part. But recent statistics about users of this sharing economy travel lodging service tell us something about who is participating in hosted stays (hint, they are young and mostly very happy with the experience).
Homestay is one of many peer to peer rental lodging businesses, but they are different from the vast majority because Homestay only offers hosted stays. They recently released a Homestay Index, providing data and analysis of the industry and the people hosting and staying in peer to peer rental lodging. It seems to be the season of analytics on sharing economy lodging, and last week I wrote about a recent study of home exchangers. Here I’ll compare the two studies a bit more and focus on what’s going on in the hosted lodging market.
Homestays are distinct from other peer to peer rental lodging options because there is always a host present for the visit. This means you are staying in the home of someone else, while they are there. There are advantages and disadvantages to this arrangement. On the positive side, you get to meet locals and are likely to be staying with someone who is eager to provide tips and information about enjoying your stay in the area. You may get to share home cooked meals, and might even end up with a lasting friendship with your host. On the down side, you will have less privacy if your host is at home during your stay. And you may need to respect quiet hour and privacy rules that would not be in place if you were there alone.
There are a three sharing economy lodging options that involve homestays:
- Home Exchanges: some home exchanges involve free hosted lodging. I think this is a small minority of home swaps.
- Hospitality Services: like Couch Surfing, free homestays
- Hosted peer to peer rental lodging: available through sites like AirBnb (a portion of their offerings are hosted) and Homestay.com (all of their offerings are hosted)
A large percentage of peer to peer rentals are un-hosted so it’s interesting to have some data on this specific segment of travel lodging from a website focused exclusively on hosted rentals.
Some facts about the market from the report:
The homestay market is approximately U.S. $15 billion.
In the U.S. travelers using rented peer to peer lodging grew from 8% in 2010 to 14% in 2014.
The share of all travelers choosing sleeping quarters in private homes is 3%.
Homestay bookings have seen more than 10x growth in 2014.
Demographics
Hosted lodging is not nearly as popular among Americans as it is in other countries. Here’s the distribution of Homestay guests by country of origin:
| Europeans | 40% |
| Asia Pacific | 28% |
| North Americans | 12% |
| South Americas | 10% |
| Middle East | 8% |
| Africa | 2% |
Unlike home exchange, for which almost half of participants are over the age of 45, close to half of the homestay population is under 30. Students are 29% of homestay users.
So overall people using hosted lodging are young. This is not surprising to me, but I think there are some significant benefits to this form of travel for people of all ages, whether through paid homestay, home exchange, or hospitality (aka couchsurfing) stay. Meeting and interacting with locals is a great way to learn about the culture, food and life wherever you are visiting. So I expect this form of sharing economy lodging will continue to grow in popularity and also gain interest among older demographics.
Happiness
Similar to the home exchange survey, this homestay study provides information on satisfaction with the lodging experience. 87% of Homestay guests surveyed rated their homestay experience as very good or excellent. That’s compared to 92% of home exchangers who were pleased with their experience. The small difference in satisfaction might be due to wording of the question, or it could be the greater potential for issues inherent in introducing human interactions to the lodging experience. With a homestay travelers not only want to be satisfied with the lodging space and comfort, but also with the personality of the host. I’m not sure but I’d guess that’s a bigger challenge.
Regardless, these are high satisfaction rates overall for sharing economy lodging services. I couldn’t find any satisfaction surveys of AirBnb or other similar services, but it would be interesting to compare. And what I’d really like to see is a survey of satisfaction across all types of travel lodging: home exchange, peer to peer rentals, hospitality lodging, and hotels.
Of course, in the end which type of lodging you choose should be based on what you want from your experience. Do you want to have maid service and a restaurant downstairs? If so, don’t choose a home stay or house swap! But if you want to meet and interact with locals, hosted rental lodging might be a great alternative to hotels for your next trip.