Article Text
Abstract
Purpose Airbnb is a web-based peer-to-peer (P2P) service that enables potential hosts and guests to broker accommodations in private homes as an alternative to traditional hotels. The hospitality sector has increasingly gone smoke-free over the last decade. This study identified the availability and cost of smoking-permitted accommodations identified on Airbnb.
Methods The study team searched for Airbnb accommodations in 12 Canadian cities across each of Canada’s 10 provinces. Searches included availability for a single person for a private room, or double occupancy for an entire home/apartment; searches were for 1-night and 1-week stays.
Results Cities across Canada, including Regina, Fredericton and Charlottetown, had no smoking-permitted accommodations available for the searches conducted. The proportion of private rooms available for one night that permitted smoking ranged from 2% in Calgary, 4% in Winnipeg and St. John’s, 10% in Halifax and Victoria, 18% in Toronto, 45% in Vancouver and 69% in Montréal. The average cost for a private room for one night in Vancouver was $128, while the cost for a private room that permits smoking was $62; however, in other markets prices were more similar.
Discussion Across Canada, there is a wide range of smoking-permitted accommodations available through Airbnb. In some markets, smoking-permitted accommodation may be significantly less expensive than smoke-free options. As hotel chains increasingly go smoke-free, it is possible that the marketplace will respond with offerings to fulfil consumer demand. As policy makers consider how to regulate P2P services like Airbnb, public health considerations should be included.
- Secondhand smoke
- Public policy
- Prevention
- Denormalization
- Social marketing
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors All authors made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; data acquisition was primarily accomplished by OD and LS. All authors contributed to the analysis or interpretation of data. All authors contributed to drafting the work and revising it critically for important intellectual content. Each author provided final approval of the version published.
Funding The Propel Centre for Population Health Impact is supported by a Major Program Grant from the Canadian Cancer Society Research Initiative (CCSRI Grant #701019).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.