Do Airbnb's "Superhosts" deserve the badge? An empirical study from China. Issue 4 (3rd April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sun, Nan; Liu, Dongsheng; Zhu, Anding; Chen, Yahui; Yuan, Yufei
• Is Part Of: Asia Pacific journal of tourism research. Volume 24:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 296
• Page End: 313
• Publication Date: 2019-04-03
• Subjects: Sharing economy -- Airbnb -- Badge -- Superhost -- Online reviews -- Text classification -- LSTM -- Text clustering -- K-means -- Service behavior; Tourism -- Asia -- Periodicals; Tourism -- Pacific Area -- Periodicals; 338.4791504429
• DOI: 10.1080/10941665.2018.1564342
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1094-1665

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The "Superhost" badge is that Airbnb entitles the host provides good services. This study verifies Airbnb's "Superhost" mechanism by applying text mining technologies, combined with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and K -Means, to the entire dataset of tourists' online reviews of Hangzhou city, China. Six kinds of hosts' good services are identified, including "Three Meals or Night Snacks, " "Fruits, Drinks or Snacks, " "Travel Guides, " "Free Shuttle or Helping with Luggage, " "Chats, " and "Replies or Communications." The study reveals the minority of "Superhosts" are mentioned of providing the majority of six kinds of good services, which means "Superhosts" do deserve the badge.