Abstract:
Airbnb is well known as a disruptive innovation, or a digital disruption occurred in the
real estate industry specifically in the tourist accommodation sector as a result of the firm’s
ground-breaking online commercial enterprise model and its remarkable charm to
holidaymakers. At present Airbnb is known as the most extensive online platform
providing tourist accommodations in private homes and is a function of growing
movement most popularly recognised as “Sharing”, “Peer-Peer” or “Digital” Economy.
Scholars are ever more concerned on the tourism industry, tourist attributes and behaviour,
tourist destinations and housing market shaped by the Airbnb. But quite a few scholars
have utilised geospatial analysis to identify and explore the impacts of sharing
accommodations through analysing the spreading of Airbnb accommodations in tourist
regions. This study has interpreted the spread and other characteristics of Airbnb activity
in selected tourist cities in Sri Lanka using the data obtained from the Airbnb platform
through web scraping technique and using the data openly available at AirDNA website.
As per the findings, there are approximately twelve thousand and four hundred listed
Airbnb tourist accommodations in Sri Lanka as at July 2017, and the two largest Airbnb
rental markets in Sri Lanka are Galle and Colombo, followed by other tourist cities. The
composition of Airbnb supply is mostly dominated by rooms rented out by residents in
private homes in both touristic and relatively non-touristic cities.
