Be a “Superhost”: The importance of badge systems for peer-to-peer rental accommodations

Many sharing-economy websites like Airbnb that offer vacation-rental options for travelers are very popular. However, few studies targeting the vacation-rental industry have investigated online reviews. To narrow this gap, this study focuses mainly on the gamification design developed by Airbnb that awards a “Superhost” badge to hosts who receive good reviews and observes how this can impact an accommodation's review volume and ratings. All available information regarding Airbnb accommodation offered in Hong Kong was retrieved from Airbnb's website. We then constructed a negative binomial model and a Tobit model with different independent variables and controlled a set of variables relating to accommodation characteristics. The results show that an accommodation with the “Superhost” badge is more likely to receive reviews and higher ratings. In addition, guests are willing to spend more on “Superhost” accommodations. Based on our findings, we present implications for research and host practice.     

The evolution of trust in Airbnb: A case of home rental

Airbnb, a leader of P2P accommodation markets, has acknowledged that “trust is what makes Airbnb work” and has implemented several trust indicators over the years: reputation system, impression formation, and certification. We evaluate the changes in these indicators over time: 1. the modification of the reputation system, 2. the removal of hosts’ photos from the main search screen, and 3. the introduction of the Superhost program. We find that the change of the rating system was associated with a small, yet significant, reduction in ratings, that the removal of the hosts’ photos might have eliminated the price premium of trustworthy images, and that Superhost certification involves a price premium, but does not seem to compensate for established reputation.This article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Peer-to-peer accommodation networks, a special selection of research in this field.     

Core and supplemental elements of hospitality in the sharing economy: Insights from semantic and tonal cues in Airbnb property listings

Advances in peer-to-peer sharing, made popular by platforms like Airbnb, have altered previous conceptualizations of the lodging hospitality product. This study performs semantic and tonal analyses on a large-scale dataset collected from Airbnb. Our results support a concept of lodging hospitality that comprises core products and services, supplemental customer care, and a third factor we term ‘host sharing.’ Furthermore, the study offers insight into the topics and rhetorical tactics currently defining lodging hospitality marketing on the Airbnb platform. These findings can be used to provide guidance for Airbnb hosts to provide suitable information in their listings.     

Employing structural topic modelling to explore perceived service quality attributes in Airbnb accommodation

This study employs the structural topic model to extract service quality attributes from 242,020 Airbnb reviews in Malaysia. 22 service related topics were extracted from the corpus and four topics have not appeared in previous Airbnb studies. A widely used modified SERVQUAL questionnaire (MSQ) is cross-validated in this study by comparing its service quality attributes with the results of the topic modelling, which indicates that this MSQ can cover general Airbnb service quality attributes. This study also examines the different preferences of Malaysian and international Airbnb users and the changing patterns of the top six service quality attributes during a five-year period. The findings reveal that Malaysian Airbnb users care more about the appearance and location of the property, and international Airbnb users pay more attention to whether the property can accommodate a group of people. In addition, communication with the host is found to play an increasingly important role in Airbnb users’ lodging experiences.     

Stranger-danger? Understanding the moderating effects of children in the household on non-hosting residents' emotional solidarity with Airbnb visitors,feeling safe,and support for Airbnb

Airbnb has been portrayed as making neighborhoods significantly less safe where hosts are operating. However, the evidence has been mainly anecdotal. The present study developed a model of non-hosting residents' emotional solidarity with Airbnb visitors, their sense of feeling safe, and support for Airbnb hosts. Results indicated that non-hosting residents who had higher emotional solidarity with Airbnb visitors were more supportive of Airbnb hosts. Also, economic benefits and place attachment were significant antecedents to emotional solidarity. Considering the protection motivation theory, results of group modeling indicated the sense of feeling safe was an important factor for non-hosting residents with children living in their household, attributed to parental fear of visitors around children (i.e., “stranger danger”). The sense of feeling safe was a significant mediating factor influencing support for Airbnb hosts in the non-hosting residents group with children living in their households.     

Value proposition operationalization in peer-to-peer platforms using machine learning

The purpose of this paper is to operationalize the value proposition in peer-to-peer platforms, by analyzing from all the variables which ones contribute the most for being an Airbnb Superhost. Authors use two different Machine Learning methods: Boruta for feature selection and SVM classification for prediction. More than 250 variables from 5136 listings were analyzed in the Canary Islands region. Results indicate that the Peer-to-Peer Platform Value proposition can be decomposed into three components: shared resources, value package and communications. Value proposition operationalization shows the possibilities and contribution of Machine Learning in the field of Tourism and Marketing. As practical implications for hosts, relevant variables help to have an understanding of the potential not addressed in their own value proposition. For Airbnb, relevant variables could be highlighted in search results or filters. For other companies, relevant variables of the value proposition can help to operationalize.     

Airbnb Superhosts' talk in commercial homes

Critically analysing the behaviour of peer-to-peer accommodation hosts provides alternative ways of understanding hospitality and tourism experiences. This paper offers an analysis of how Airbnb hosts in Australia talk and interact with guests and the contextual constructs which shape this behaviour. We applied a theoretical framework of service language and a multiple case study methodology to explore the perspectives of different Superhosts. Our analysis suggests peer-to-peer exchanges are influenced by the nature of accommodation as a commercial home. Talk and interaction varies through pre-arrival, arrival, occupancy, departure and post-departure. Our findings contribute to research regarding peer-to-peer accommodation hosting, interpersonal communication and service interactions in commercial homes, and guide a design of hospitality-centric experiences in a changing accommodation environment.     

The application of Aristotle’s rhetorical theory to the sharing economy: an empirical study of Airbnb

ABSTRACT

Sharing economy businesses require extensive trust-based communication between users and service providers to facilitate users’ positive persuasion processes. Based on Aristotle’s rhetorical theory, this study identifies three key persuasive cues (credibility, emotional bonding, and accommodation characteristics) and validates their roles in establishing users’ trust in an Airbnb setting. The moderating role of interactivity is further analyzed. Research findings from a survey sample of 171 Airbnb users indicate that persuasive cues are positively associated with trust in Airbnb hosts, which significantly leads to Airbnb brand trust. Interestingly, the moderating role of interactivity is only found in the relationship between emotional bonding and trust in Airbnb hosts. This study contributes to a better understanding of the factors that affect users’ trust building in the sharing economy context, and it offers guidance for platform providers to better operate their businesses by highlighting the important roles of persuasive cues and interactivity in users’ trust-building processes.     

Price determinants of sharing economy based accommodation rental: A study of listings from 33 cities on Airbnb.com

The advent of the “sharing economy” challenges not only the business of hotel industry but also the theories and models based on the conventional hotel industry. A key dimension of the hospitality industry is pricing. The aim of this study is to identify the price determinants of sharing economy based accommodation offers in the digital marketplace. Specifically, a sample of 180,533 accommodation rental offers in 33 cities listed on Airbnb.com is investigated using ordinary least squares and quantile regression analysis. Twenty-five explanatory variables in five categories (host attributes, site and property attributes, amenities and services, rental rules, and online review ratings) are explored for the intricacies of the relationships between pricing and its determinants.     

The 7 Ps marketing mix of home-sharing services: Mining travelers’ online reviews on Airbnb

The 7 Ps model is a very useful tool in helping service firms solve managerial issues in marketing. Guided by the 7 Ps marketing mix framework, a big-data, supervised machine learning analysis was performed with 1,148,062 English reviews of 37,092 Airbnb listings in San Francisco and New York City. The results disclose similar patterns in both markets, where travelers shared their experience about Service Product and Physical Evidence most often; Price and Promotion were the least mentioned elements. Furthermore, through a series of comparisons of Airbnb’s 7 Ps marketing mix among the listings managed by different types of hosts, multi-unit and single-unit hosts seem to offer similar services with a small observable difference; whereas superhosts and the ordinary hosts deliver different services. This study makes valuable methodological contributions and provides practical marketing insights for hoteliers and the hosts and webmasters on home-sharing websites. Policymakers should pay special attention to multi-unit hosts.