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Price Determinants of Porto's Airbnb Listings

Nowadays, the important role of the sharing economy in the tourism sector leads to an increase, day by day, in the number of people involved as hosts or guests. Such a dynamic provides for tourists from all over the world a feasible alternative to traditional services, permitting them to customize their trips and to enrich their experiences interacting with locals. Therefore, important platforms like 9Flats, Fairbnb, Airbnb, or Expedia entered the industry. Of these, Airbnb, a pioneer in peer-to-peer accommodation, has become since 2008 the most important player at the global level with a significant influence in the market. The growth of Airbnb platform motivates the present study on the factors influencing the prices established by hosts for their listings in Porto, Portugal. In 2018, Portugal was one of the countries included in the top 10 countries that faced a direct economic impact from Airbnb, the hosts' income and estimated guests' spending were $2.3 billion. This paper aims to build a hedonic price model for Airbnb listings in Cedofeita neighbourhood, the city centre of Porto, to identify attributes that influence the room price significantly using WLS regression model. The paper analyses the influence of different categories of factors on the average daily rate (expressed in EUR from a double perspective: before (2019) and during COVID-19 (2020). The categories of variables taken into consideration highlight the listing's reputation, the listing's characteristics, the listing's location, the rental policies, and the hosts' behaviour. The results of our study showed that Airbnb guests pay more for space, privacy, and quality, the pandemics having no effect on these criteria. The size of the property decreases in impact because of lower demand, while the guests' focus on safety and security decreases the role of rental policies (instant book enabled, cancellation policy) and response time. Guests search for guarantees, trust, and good reputation representing the major criteria used to choose a listing - seniority and superhost status having a higher impact on price during COVID-19 than previously.