How much do hoteliers actually make use of dynamic pricing strategies? We collected data on the price of a single room booked in advance (from three months to a single day), from almost 1000 hotels in eight European capital cities. Pricing strategies were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics, box plots and econometric panel data techniques. The empirical results show that the inter-temporal pricing structure primarily depends on the type of customer, the star rating and the number of suppliers with available rooms.

Dynamic pricing techniques allow using a number of variables in a tactical way compared to standard catalogue prices. This study merges in a conceptual model the relevance of the tactical and the strategic dimension of these variables, classified according to their tangible, reputational or contextual nature.To empirically validate the hypotheses, a database of 21.596 price observations was retrieved from booking.com. The study presents a hedonic price function, using the Shapley-Owen decomposition of the Rsquared to elicit the importance of each group of factors. Further, a hierarchical cluster analysis measures the presence of heterogeneity across operators.The results show that online reputation is gaining importance over the traditional star rating. Despite the tangible variables remain of paramount importance, the findings suggest the relevant role of contextual variables in short-run price variations. The players operating in the tourism and hospitality industries should integrate these findings when designing pricing strategies.

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The emergence of peer-to-peer platforms, known as the sharing economy, has empowered people to market their own products and services. However, there are information asymmetries that make it difficult to evaluate the reputation of the seller a priori. This paper examines how sellers have to enhance their personal reputation in order to optimize revenues. The study proposes a revenue model where, given a frontier that depends on the shared assets, the maximization of revenues depends on reputational factors of the person and of the product. An empirical validation of the framework has been conducted in the context of Airbnb, a popular sharing economy travel platform. The sample comprises 981 establishments across 5 European cities. The findings suggest the crucial importance of personal reputation along with some distinctive reputational attributes of the product itself. These results emphasize the role of trust and personal branding strategies in peer-to-peer platforms.

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