Emerging sharing accommodation such as Airbnb provides additional options to both guests with short-term accommodation needs and hosts with spare rooms, which challenges the traditional hospitality industry. This paper explores Airbnb’s optimal pricing strategies when competing with incumbents on both supply and demand sides in the accommodation market. Firstly, we employ the willingness-to-pay model to obtain Airbnb’s and hotel’s proportions on short-term accommodation demand side, and proportions of Airbnb and long-term rentals on spare room supply side. Then, we obtain Airbnb’s optimal pricing in different market situations by optimisation models that maximise the profit. Finally, optimal price and wage strategies are given in friendly, neutral and unfriendly markets by simulations. It is found that Airbnb may drive incumbents out of the accommodation market under certain conditions. And different pricing strategies should be taken for Airbnb to compete with different levels of hotels. Suggestions to traditional platforms and governments are offered.

Airbnb等新兴的共享住宿为有短期住宿需求的客人和有空余房间的房东提供了更多选择，这对传统酒店业提出了挑战。本文探讨了 Airbnb 在与住宿市场供需双方竞争时的最优定价策略。首先，我们采用支付意愿模型得到Airbnb和酒店在短期住宿需求方的比例，以及Airbnb和长租在空余房间供应方的比例。然后，我们通过利润最大化的优化模型得到Airbnb在不同市场情况下的最优定价。最后通过模拟给出了友好、中性和不友好市场中的最优价格和工资策略。据发现，Airbnb 可能会在特定条件下将在位者赶出住宿市场。Airbnb应该采取不同的定价策略来与不同级别的酒店竞争。对传统平台和政府提出了建议。