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

Abstract

Advances in peer-to-peer sharing, made popular by platforms like Airbnb, have altered previous conceptuali­ zations 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 prod­ ucts 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