Leveraging Bike-Share Systems to Improve Guest Experiences and Attract Tourists

Abstract

Bike-share systems have become a popular method for traveling within a city, and they are rapidly growing in many cities around the world, including New York, Paris, and Shanghai. This rapid growth allows tourists to explore a city on their own, using a communal bike, giving them an essential new way to discover the city. As a result, access to a bike-share system is becoming a big part of a tourist’s experience of a city and an essential hotel amenity. In this paper, we provide (1) guidance to hotels on the choice between offering guests an in-house bike-share system and supporting their use of a city-run bike-share system, and (2) prescriptions for cities on how to best design and run tourist-friendly bike-share systems.