Identifying factors affecting the status of superhost: evidence from Sardinia and Sicily
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Identifying factors affecting the status of superhost: evidence from Sardinia and Sicily Giulia Contu1 · Claudio Conversano1 · Luca Frigau1 · Francesco Mola1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Airbnb is currently one of the most developed new forms of hospitality. It is essentially an online platform that connects the owners of apartments or rooms with potential guests. The core of the Airbnb model is the host, who offers a support to guests and favor a link between the guests and the tourism destination. Airbnb awards the best hosts with the badge of “Superhost”, which is attributed according to four elements: the occupancy rate, the number of reservations, the response rate and the cancellation policy. This paper focuses on hosts and their activities. Specifically, the main goal is understanding if the four aforementioned elements actually influence the attribution of the “Superhost” badge to hosts operating in two of the main Italian touristic destinations: Sardinia and Sicily. Furthermore, the link between the four basic elements and other “managerial factors” is analyzed. Logistic and Probit models are used for these purposes and the main findings are derived from the computation of marginal effects. The results show a direct impact of the four Airbnb variables and of other “managerial” variables, as for instance the presence of extra fees for cleaning or similar services, on the probability to be a superhost. Keywords Airbnb · Superhost · Logistic regression · Probit regression · Marginal effects
1 Introduction Airbnb is a company operating as an online marketplace for peer-to-peer accommodation rental services. It is one of the most famous online platforms where it is possible to book single rooms or whole apartments for one or more days. Founded in 2008 in San Francisco, in the last few years it has grown significantly, becoming an important tool for tourists who look for a different, often less expensive kind of accommodation (Guttentag 2015; Aznar et al. 2017). Actually, it operates in more than 65,000 cities and 191 countries and it sells millions of room nights for tourists around the globe. In 2016, Airbnb has declared
* Claudio Conversano [email protected] http://people.unica.it/claudioconversano 1
Department of Business and Economics, University of Cagliari, Viale Frà Ignazio 17, 09045 Cagliari, Italy
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160 million guests. In the same year, more than three millions of announcements were published. The number of hosts is 2.9 millions and an average of 800,000 overnight stays are spent each day in rooms or apartments booked on Airbnb.1 The number of people that subscribe as hosts increases at a rate of around 14,000 new hosts per month.2 To become a host is only necessary to decide to share a proper space, a room or an entire apartment, and to enroll on the Airbnb platform. Moreover, before to appear in the platform, it is necessary to decide, and to declare, specific aspects related to the host activity: a minimum and maximum number of nights, how
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