Measurement and Analysis of the Reviews in Airbnb

Abstract

Airbnb, a recently emerged online lodging service that allows house and apartment dwellers to lease out their premises to short-term renters like tourists, is reconstructing the value chain of the traditional hotel industry. It works as a platform that connects hosts and travelers and facilities their interaction and exchange. Studying this service could shed light on understanding the emerging sharing economy from a user centric perspective. In this work, we collect the profiles of 43.8 million Airbnb users, and analyze the reviews they published online. We model the interactions between Airbnb users using a review graph, and study their mobility patterns by investigating their reviews. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first measurement study of massive Airbnb users on a global scale, and it provides insights of their activities in both cyberspace and the physical world.