Online Platforms, Cooperatives, and Smesqualitative Study Among Smes on Online Platforms and the Suitability of Cooperatives to Reduce Dependencies

The paper examines how SMEs in sectors where online platforms play a significant role deal with the resulting situation and investigates to what extent cooperative approaches are perceived as a tool to reduce dependencies. For this purpose, the Viennese hotel sector was examined, as a high proportion of bookings are made via online booking platforms (OTAs)The findings show that a large proportion of SMEs accept the position of OTAs due to dependencies in place. The reason is that SMEs often feel overwhelmed by digitalisation and don’t know what measures to take. Those hotels who took countermeasures mainly did so by increasing their own (digital) visibility and individually setting up direct booking options. As cooperatives have often been used in the past as an instrument to reduce dependencies, their suitability for hotel operators to collectively build a countermeasure against OTAs was investigated in a subsequent step. The results show that cooperatives are not perceived as an instrument for direct countermeasures, mainly because of a lack of pioneers and uncertain prospects of success. However, the analysis shows that cooperative solutions are seen as a viable instrument if they do not directly challenge OTAs, but rather strengthen the individual position of the SMEs