Content area
Full Text
Introduction
An average guest room and ordinary staff interaction are no longer able to meet the expectations of hotel guests. These new expectations are driven by intangible experiences as MacCannell (2013, p. 33) stated, “more and more often it is pure experience, which does not leave any material traces that is produced and sold”. Lodging network hospitality organizations are forms of tourism that are experience based and place great importance on reviews. They can impact the local community while providing basic lodging to guests. These organizations use an internet platform for information exchange and booking, same as traditional lodging and other forms of peer-to-peer travel.
A recent development in the delivery of many products, including lodging products, is the share economy. In the share economy, online companies are facilitating a network of owners listing their available products in an effort to maximize their use, while consumers are renting products from peers rather than purchasing them from traditional companies (Geron, 2013). One such product developed from the changing needs of today’s consumer is network hospitality website, online communities of travelers who open up their homes to other travelers as an alternative to traditional lodging by offering spare rooms and couches.
As hospitality network organizations develop and thrive, it is important to understand, in the context of the experience economy, how this product meets the experience demands of today’s guest and how this could impact traditional lodging products. Although there has been recent interest in these types of organizations in popular media as well as in academic research, there is a greater need to understand what dimensions of the experience economy are present for guests in these network hospitality experiences and what impact this could have on the lodging industry in general. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the value of the network hospitality experience for the guest and to develop a better understanding of network hospitality as a unique alternative to traditional lodging. By completing this research, the experience economy theory will be applied to an area it has not been thus far in the hospitality literature, expanding on the experience economy theory and increasing the understanding of network hospitality’s potential impact on traditional lodging.
Literature review
The share economy
The share economy,...