Even as home-sharing services such as Airbnb grow in popularity, most Americans are still not turning to them for their travel plans.
On Monday, insurance company Allianz Global Assistance released a study showing that 53 percent of Americans were either “not very likely” or “not at all likely” to use a sharing economy service — in which owners rent out a house or a car for customers’ use — for their travels this summer.
And yet this year’s fourth annual Allianz Travel Insurance Sharing Economy Index found that 83 percent of Americans are familiar with such services — up from 47 percent in 2015.
Courtesy Allianz Global Assistance.
Unsurprisingly, millennials were the most likely to participate in the share economy, with 76 percent likely to trust its services. Overall, the number of people likely to rely on home-sharing platforms for their travels has been steadily increasing from 17 percent in 2015 to 50 percent in 2017, dipping slightly to 47 percent in 2018.
“This is the first time we’ve seen intent to use sharing economy services decline, particularly among millennials, which is surprising as they led its early adoption,” said Daniel Durazo, director of communications at Allianz Global Assistance, in a statement. “Millennials appreciate the value and authentic local experiences that are offered by sharing economy services, while they also like the product and overall experience offered by traditional services.”
Income also plays a role in one’s likeliness to use newer forms of accommodation in their travels — 67 percent of Americans earning over $50,000 a year were likely to trust sharing economy services, compared to only 54 percent of those earning less than $50,000.
Courtesy Allianz Global Assistance.
But even with these strides, many people still see home-sharing platforms as slightly subpar compared to traditional accommodations like hotels. One-third of millennials told Allianz that traditional services offer a better overall experience (up from just 22 percent in 2017), and 26 percent said that they offer a better-quality product.
“Travel suppliers vying for the millennial market this year should capitalize on their strengths and try to shore up their weaknesses,” Durazo said.
Methodology:
These are findings of an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of Allianz Global Assistance. For this survey, a sample of 1,005 Americans from the Ipsos I-Say panel was interviewed from May 2 – 5, 2018. The precision of online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the results are accurate to within +/- 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what the results would have been had all American adults been polled. Quota sampling and weighting were employed in order to balance demographics and ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the actual U.S. population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Credibility intervals are wider among subsets of the population.