Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Seongsoo Jang (Corresponding Author)

Seongsoo Jang is a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK. His research interests include digital marketing and spatial analytics in tourism, hospitality, and retailing.

Jinwon Kim

Jinwon Kim is a tourism/recreation/community geographer and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Tourism, Hospitality and Event Management at the University of Florida, USA. His research goal is to identify the role of tourism, recreation and park in the creation of active, vibrant, healthy, sustainable and resilient communities.

Abstract (150 Words)

Peer-to-peer accommodation markets have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little attention is paid to how to remedy the disruption in terms of Airbnb business performance. This study empirically investigates the spatially varying COVID-19 disruptions in the Airbnb business and offer place-based remedying strategies through local resources, including tourism clusters and community resilience. Using real data of Airbnb operating performance, COVID-19, and local resources in Florida, we apply geographically weighted regression to estimate the spatial effects in the Airbnb performance model. The results show that Airbnb listings in rural areas that specialized in leisure businesses were more disrupted by COVID-19 than those in urban areas that specialized in hospitality businesses. Furthermore, community resilience attenuated the negative impact of COVID-19 across locations, more in rural areas than in urban areas. These findings enable Airbnb hosts and policymakers to adopt localized resource-based remedying strategies to cope with the pandemic.

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The importance of tourism clusters and community resilience for remedying Airbnb COVID-19 disruption

Peer-to-peer accommodation markets have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, little attention is paid to how to remedy the disruption in terms of Airbnb business performance. This study empirically investigates the spatially varying COVID-19 disruptions in the Airbnb business and offer place-based remedying strategies through local resources, including tourism clusters and community resilience. Using real data of Airbnb operating performance, COVID-19, and local resources in Florida, we apply geographically weighted regression to estimate the spatial effects in the Airbnb performance model. The results show that Airbnb listings in rural areas that specialized in leisure businesses were more disrupted by COVID-19 than those in urban areas that specialized in hospitality businesses. Furthermore, community resilience attenuated the negative impact of COVID-19 across locations, more in rural areas than in urban areas. These findings enable Airbnb hosts and policymakers to adopt localized resource-based remedying strategies to cope with the pandemic.