Statbel DataLab: new statistics, methods and data sources beta version
In 2021, online platforms accounted for 6,520,000 overnight stays in private accommodations
In 2021, 644,000 accommodations were booked via an online platform (Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia or TripAdvisor), with travellers spending to total of 6,520,000 nights. This is what emerged from the new figures of Statbel, the Belgian statistical office. The rental of accommodations offered by private individuals via an online platform is well established. Statbel wants to analyse this growing phenomenon in this experimental statistic. For this, Statbel uses the data it receives via Eurostat from four large platform companies. These four platforms, Airbnb, Booking.com, the Expedia Group and TripAdvisor, provide pseudonymised and aggregated data about all reservations and overnight stays that take place via their platforms on the Belgian territory.
This experimental statistic is limited to the accommodations that are offered by private individuals. Professional accommodation providers, like hotels, are excluded. The statistics on these professional providers are available in the official tourism statistics. More information about this experimental statistic and the data used is available in the tab ‘documents’.
In 2021, online platforms accounted for 6,520,000 overnight stays in private accommodations
In 2021, 644,000 accommodations were booked via an online platform, with travellers spending a total of 6,520,000 nights. This represents a substantial increase compared to 2020, year of the coronavirus, but a decrease of respectively 22% for bookings and 7% for the number of overnight stays compared to 2019, the year before the crisis.
Half of overnight stays took place in the Flemish Region
The Flemish Region registers the largest number of overnight stays in accommodations offered by private individuals and booked via an online platform. In 2021, 50.1% of all overnight stays took place in the Flemish Region, 36.2% in the Walloon Region and finally 13.7% in the Brussels-Capital Region.
Compared to 2019, the Flemish Region (+72,000) and especially the Walloon Region (+680,000) registered an increase in the number of overnight stays in private accommodations. However, the Brussels-Capital Region recorded a sharp decrease in the number of overnight stays (-1,219,000) in this period. Therefore, the share of the Brussels-Capital Region decreased from 30% in 2019 to 14% of the total number of overnight stays in Belgium in 2021.
Despite sharp decrease, Brussels-Capital remains the most popular district
Despite a sharp decrease from 2020 on, Brussels-Capital remains the district with the largest number of overnight stays booked with a private individual via an online platform. Throughout the whole calendar year 2021, 891,000 overnight stays took place in the capital. The districts Ostend (713,000 overnight stays) and Bruges (591,000 overnight stays) complete the top 3. In Wallonia, Verviers was the most popular district with 493,000 overnight stays and occupies the fifth national place.
The number of foreigners decreases further
In 2019, 77% of overnight stays were booked by non-residents, so by travellers whose main residence is located abroad. Because of the travel restrictions due to the coronavirus crisis, this share dropped to 52% in 2020 and 43% in 2021. So, the increase in the number of overnight stays observed in 2021 is mainly due to Belgians going on holidays in their own country.
Finally, it is also possible to break down the number of overnight stays of non-residents by country of origin of the traveller. This analysis shows that in 2019, the French were the largest group of non-residents who booked an accommodation offered by a private individual via an online platform. In 2020, the Dutch passed the French, and became with 23% of the overnight stays the main country of origin. Also in 2021, the Netherlands, with 27% of overnight stays, were the main country of origin of travellers renting an accommodation offered by a private individual. In 2021, the Dutch and the French accounted for more than half the number of overnight stays in private accommodations (51%). The Germans complete the top 3, with 15% of overnight stays, followed by residents of Spain and the United States. Finally, the share of the United Kingdom decreases sharply in the period 2019-2021.
In recent years, various apps have come into use that bring people into contact with each other to exchange goods and services. More and more consumers use an online platform to book a holiday home or have a meal delivered to their home by a bicycle courier. As a result, the economic importance of the sharing economy is growing rapidly.
That is why Statbel, the Belgian statistical office, in close cooperation with Eurostat and other national statistical institutes, is studying how the sharing economy can be integrated into public statistics. However, national statistical institutes face a considerable difficulty when analysing the platform companies. The largest platform companies are multinational players, often managing their activities in Belgium from a foreign head office. These companies are therefore rarely found in the regular business statistics or registers. In order to obtain the required data, national statistical institutes would therefore be obliged to contact all platform companies on a unilateral basis. This was a time-consuming and inefficient process for both the platform companies and the statistical institutes. Therefore, the European Commission decided to take these discussions into its own hands and request the data for all EU Member States via one agreement. These negotiations initially focused on the residential tourism sector and resulted in agreements with the platform companies Airbnb, Booking.com, TripAdvisor and Expedia . In the meantime, these companies have delivered the first data files to Eurostat. Eurostat then divides the microdata into 27 national pseudonymised and aggregated files, so that Statbel receives information on all reservations and overnight stays booked via these four online platforms on the Belgian territory.
With the agreements between the European Commission and the four platform companies, a first, important hurdle has been taken. But the methodological work is only just beginning. Based on the first files, the national statistical institutes and Eurostat still have to develop a harmonised approach to the methodological challenges. In particular, due to the lack of identification data in the microdata of the platform companies, double counting poses a considerable problem. This double counting, whereby an accommodation is contained in at least two different files, is a particular challenge for capacity determination. That is why this information is not included in the experimental statistics.
At the moment the national statistical institutes together with Eurostat are studying which techniques can best be used to solve the methodological problems. Innovative methods such as web scraping are particularly under consideration. Web scraping involves scraping relevant information from websites, which in combination with artificial intelligence is considered the best solution. Concretely, we study the following two approaches:
- text recognition: individuals who offer the same room on several online platforms usually use the same text. By looking for key words, such as the location of the accommodation, the size of the room, available facilities, etc., identical accommodations can be found automatically;
- Photo recognition: this technique automatically compares the photos that are placed with an advertisement in order to identify possible duplicates. However, this technique requires a large computer memory and is therefore rather kept in reserve as an alternative solution.
In time, the intention is to integrate the platform data into recurring statistics. The timing for this depends both on achieving a harmonised approach to the methodological problems and on faster data delivery by the platform companies.