What Drives Airbnb Customers’ Satisfaction in Amsterdam? A Sentiment Analysis

Abstract

The sharing economy is a new socio-economic system that allows individuals to rent out their personal belongings, such as their private car or a room in their home, for a short period. This study aims to investigate the attributes that impact customers’ satisfaction when using the sharing economy propriety rentals websites. Large data sets of Airbnb’s online reviews and listings in Amsterdam were analyzed using sentiment analysis, word clustering, ordinal logistic regression, and visualization techniques. Findings reveal that the polarity of Airbnb guests reviews in Amsterdam is significantly impacted by property price, value, cleanliness, rate, host communication, easiness of check-in, the accuracy of property description, and whether the host is super host or not. Surprisingly, the property neighborhood was not found to impact customers’ sentiment in Amsterdam. In addition, Airbnb guests in Amsterdam tend to positively express their experience satisfaction level mainly based on property exact location and host interaction followed with the facilities surrounding the property, property cleanliness, and room quality. On the other hand, negative online reviews tend to be mainly linked to problems with check-in services followed by aspects related to weak host interaction, location, and room quality. The results indicate that Airbnb hosts need to offer clear and easy check-in services with emphasizing the importance of keeping a good communication channel with their guests to enhance customers’ experience and increase customers’ satisfaction level. Future studies should investigate the applicability of the findings of this study in the context of other cities.