© 2020 The Author(s)
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RESEARCH PAPER 1
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton
Touristic Region, Hungary
Gábor Dudás
1
*, Tamás Kovalcsik
2
, György Vida
3
,
Lajos Boros
4
and Gyula Nagy
5
1
Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, 5600 Békéscsaba, Szabó Dezső utca 42, Hungary. Email:
dudasgabor5@gmail.com
2
Department of Economic and Social Geography, University of Szeged, Hungary. Email: kovalcsik.tamas@geo.u-
szeged.hu
3
Department of Economic and Social Geography, University of Szeged, Hungary. Email: vidagy@geo.u-szeged.hu
4
Department of Economic and Social Geography, University of Szeged, Hungary. Email: borosl@geo.u-szeged.hu
5
Department of Economic and Social Geography, University of Szeged, Hungary. Email:
geo.nagy.gyula@gmail.com
* Corresponding author
Abstract
The aim of the paper was to investigate the impact of different accommodation attributes on Airbnb listing prices
in a touristic area. The study applied hedonic price modeling utilizing a sample of 2417 Airbnb accommodation
rental offers in the Lake Balaton Touristic Region in Hungary. Our results revealed that property-related attributes
significantly influence Airbnb prices although the magnitude of these effects is very diverse and complex. The OLS
findings showed that the provision of air conditioning, free internet, and free parking are the main determinants
of Airbnb price in the sample area, while the number of available photos and the presence of a kitchen does not
significantly influence the price. The quantile regression results further demonstrated that capacity, the provision
of breakfast, and TV leads to higher prices among the higher-priced accommodations, while the number of
bedrooms and bathrooms, smoking, and free parking influence more the prices of lower-end accommodations.
Keywords: sharing economy, Airbnb, peer-to-peer accommodation rental, hedonic price regression, quantile
regression
Citation: Dudás, G., Kovalcsik, T., Vida, G., Boros, L. and Nagy, G. (2020). Price determinants of Airbnb listing
prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary. European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410.
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
2
Introduction
Every night, tens of thousands of people decide not to stay in traditional accommodations like hotels
but use the services of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation sharing platforms that allow ordinary people
to rent residences to tourists. For more than a decade now, P2P accommodation sharing emerged as a
major trend shaping the global tourism and hospitality industry (Guttentag & Smith, 2017; Magno et al.,
2018), disrupting the way the tourism sector is running (Bakker et al., 2018; Guttentag, 2015) and led to
the complete restructuring of markets and the appearance of new travel forms (Forno & Garibaldi, 2015;
Önder et al., 2018). The rise of the phenomenon is remarkable, as the share of P2P accommodation in
2018 make up about 7% of the global accommodation supply, and the projected annual growth rate for
the P2P accommodation economy is expected to be 31% between 2013 and 2025 (Bakker et al., 2018).
However, P2P accommodation rental has not necessarily created entirely new demand, as people
informally renting out their residences to tourists has existed for a long time (Guttentag et al., 2018;
Magno et al., 2018). But the development of Internet platforms and mobile technologies have brought
many new ways of sharing and revolutionized this practice by facilitating older forms of P2P
accommodation sharing on a larger scale (Gutiérrez et al., 2017), or at least increased and made this new
type of supply more visible (Önder et al., 2018).
Since its inception in 2008, Airbnb has experienced rapid growth and from a small start-up it has
become the most important global player among P2P accommodation platforms with nearly 5 million
listings and more than 300 million guest arrivals in 81 000 cities in 191 countries (Airbnb, 2018). The
essence and rapid success of Airbnb lies on the effective mix of several key factors, including affordable
prices and economic advantages (Tussyadiah, 2015), authenticity and unique consumer experience
(Guttentag, 2015; Magno et al., 2018; Tussyadiah & Pesonen, 2016; Wang et al., 2016), sustainability
(Midgett et al., 2017), flexible supply (Li & Srinivasan, 2018), perceived attractiveness and responsiveness
of the host (Ert et al., 2016; Gunter & Önder, 2018), and the accommodation’s ratings (Tussyadiah &
Zach, 2017). Above all these advantages, price and lower cost are frequently reported as one of the most
important factors facilitating the rapid diffusion of P2P accommodation sharing phenomenon (Pizam,
2014; Tussyadiah & Pesonen, 2016). As long known, price is one of the main determinants of hotel choice
in tourism and hospitality industry (Lockyer, 2005), therefore, hotel room pricing is a well-researched
topic (Gibbs et al., 2017). As the popularity of and demand for P2P accommodations has increased,
pricing became a relevant issue in the sharing economy based accommodation sector as well, and
understanding Airbnb prices became crucial both from practical and theoretical perspectives.
Nevertheless, it has to be noted that as P2P rentals are privately owned apartments or houses and the
vast majority of them are managed by non-professional hosts, thus, the price determining attributes
and mechanism may differ from those determining hotel room price (Önder et al., 2018; Wang &
Nicolau, 2017), even though they share many common features (e.g. site and property attributes,
amenities). Therefore, we think it is important to examine the impact of these accommodation
attributes which are also relevant to the traditional hotel industry on price in the sharing economy
based accommodation sector. P2P accommodation rental in its present form is relatively new, but the
number of studies investigating the price determining factors and the underlying pricing strategies of
this phenomenon is growing rapidly (Gibbs et al., 2017; Hrobath et al., 2017; Li et al., 2016a; Wang &
Nicolau, 2017). The majority of these studies focus mainly on larger cities, however, the importance of
Airbnb is rising in popular coastal resorts and holiday destinations and regions as well (Adamiak, 2018).
These regions differ in several characteristics from larger cities e.g. the spatial patterns of supply,
population distribution, the spatiality and other features of the real estate market and the housing stock,
etc. Thus, the impact of P2P accommodations can be different in these regions than in large cities, but
this issue is largely unexplored in the existing body of literature. Therefore, the main aim of this study
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
3
is to shed light on the determining factors of Airbnb accommodation prices in a touristic region. For
this purpose, the Lake Balaton Touristic Region in Hungary was selected for a case study.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: the next section reviews the related work on Airbnb
and focuses on previous researches considering hedonic price theory and quantile regression. Then, the
paper describes and presents the applied data and study methodology. Afterwards, the paper presents
our empirical findings and finally, we conclude the paper, and discuss its limitations and present the
directions for future work.
Literature review
The sharing economy and Airbnb
The sharing of goods, spaces, services, and skills among individuals is not a completely new
phenomenon, but the scope of these activities was very limited in the past due to the difficulty of
matching supply and demand and the lack of trust between strangers (Ranjbari et al., 2018). In the last
decade, the mix of many factors such as the proliferation of the Internet and mobile technologies,
globalization, urbanization, the global economic crisis, and shifts in general attitudes towards
consumption and sustainability had come to cover these gaps and fostered the advent of the sharing
economy (Bardhi & Eckhardt, 2012; Mody et al., 2017; Möhlmann, 2015; Ranjbari et al., 2018). Under the
“tent” of the sharing economy, these technological innovations, economic and social changes are
transforming the way people produce, consume, travel, and communicate among many other activities
(Alizadeh et al., 2018; Quattrone et al., 2016; Van der Borg et al., 2017) and expand traditional trading
and consumption practices (Sung et al., 2018).
The phenomenon of the sharing economy appeared in the early 2000s (Sung et al., 2018), however, given
its exponential growth, in recent days, it is estimated that 72% of Americans (Pew Research Center,
2016) and 70% of Europeans (OCU, 2016) are involved in sharing economy activities (Murillo et al., 2017).
Furthermore, it has tremendous market potential as the revenue generated by the key sharing economy
sectors are estimated to increase from $15 billion today to roughly $335 billion by 2025 (PWC, 2015ab).
Services covered by the sharing economy range from transportation (e.g. Uber, Lyft) to accommodation
(e.g. Airbnb, HomeAway) to finance (e.g. Kickstarter, Prosper) (Dudás et al., 2017b; Hamari et al., 2016;
Quattrone et al., 2016). P2P marketplaces associated with the sharing economy operate particularly
within the field of travel and tourism and the most popular and important player in the hospitality
sector is the home sharing platform Airbnb (Boros et al., 2018; Dann et al., 2019; Dudás et al., 2017a;
Guttentag, 2015; Wang & Jeong, 2018). Airbnb, by providing access to millions of spaces from apartments
and villas to castles, igloos, treehouses, or boats has recorded more than 400 million guest arrivals
(Airbnb, 2018) since its launch in 2008, without owning a single room. By mid-2018, it was estimated to
worth more than $38bn (Forbes, 2018) meaning that it is valued more than the world’s largest hotel
chains such as the Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Marriott, or Hyatt (Akbar & Tracogna, 2018; Statista, 2018).
Given the exponential growth of Airbnb and its disruptive potential (Guttentag, 2015), it has received
considerable scholarly attention and researchers have begun to examine a variety of issues related to
Airbnb. Several studies put focus on challenges and potential threats to Airbnb’s future growth
(Guttentag, 2015; Meleo et al., 2016), while other address regulatory and tax issues (Guttentag, 2017;
Hajibaba & Dolnicar, 2017; Jefferson-Jones, 2015; Kaplan & Nadler, 2015) indicating that new regulatory
frameworks should be established to enable Airbnb to operate legally (Edelman & Gerardin, 2015). More
recently, many scholars have turned their attention to the impact of Airbnb on housing market and
rental prices (Delgado-Medrano & Lyon, 2016; Lee, 2016; Samaan, 2015; Wachsmuth & Weisler, 2018)
highlighting that due to the diffusion of Airbnb, entire homes and apartments are disappearing from
the local housing market and this process may drive up the rents in several cities (Ke, 2017) and exclude
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
4
residents from tourist areas (Dogru et al., 2017; Oskam & Boswijk, 2016). Moreover, there have been
many reports on the effects of Airbnb on the tourism industry (Fang et al., 2016; Gutiérrez et al., 2017;
Van der Borg et al., 2017) including Airbnb’s impact on hotel prices (Aznar et al., 2017; Choi et al., 2015;
Neeser et al., 2015; Xie & Kwok, 2017; Zervas et al., 2017), on hotel sales (Blal et al., 2018), on hotel
occupancy rates (Ginindza & Tichaawa, 2017), and on tourism industry employment (Fang et al., 2016).
Furthermore, there were recent studies set up to explore prices and pricing decisions on Airbnb
(Edelman & Luca, 2014; Kakar et al., 2016; Teubner et al., 2017). However, given the Airbnb is primarily
an urban phenomenon, empirical papers focus mainly on large cities (Gibbs et al., 2017; Wang & Nicolau,
2017) and investigations on holiday destinations is lacking. In the following section, the paper reviews
the relevant studies focusing on hotel price determinants and reveal recent findings conducted for
Airbnb pricing determinants.
Pricing issues in the Tourism and Hospitality industry / hedonic price regression
Pricing is a relevant issue in the tourism and hospitality literature (Hung et al., 2010), however, the price
consumers are willing to pay for an accommodation largely depends on the attributes an
accommodation can offer (Castro & Ferreira, 2015). Wang and Nicolau (2017) categorize these factors
into five categories: site-specific characteristics, quality signalling factors, hotel amenities and services,
property characteristics, and external factors. The effects of these attributes on price attracted
significant scholarly attention by hospitality and tourism researchers in recent years, and many studies
have investigated the pricing strategies in the traditional hospitality industry (Becerra et al., 2013; Castro
& Ferreira, 2018; Chen & Rothschild, 2010; Espinet et al., 2003; Hung et al., 2010; Lee, 2016; Masiero et
al., 2015; Schamel, 2012; Thrane, 2007; Yang et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2011b).
A widely applied method for assessing the importance of these attributes is hedonic price modeling,
which is credited to Rosen (1974) and is based on the idea that different price for a product or service
can be viewed as composites of attributes and characteristics. Thus, the hedonic function can reveal
how marketable product features will be reflected in the products market prices, in other words, it can
outline, for example, how room/accommodation prices will change when characteristics of
room/accommodation change (Schamel, 2012; Teubner et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2011b). A number of
recent contributions employ hedonic models, for example, Espinet, Saez, Coenders and Fluvia (2003)
examined how attributes of holiday hotels in a sun-and-beach segment influence room prices and found
that hotel size, distance to the beach, and the availability of free parking space have significant effect
on price. Thrane (2007) applied the same approach in the city of Oslo and also showed evidence that
the presence of attributes such as free parking, location, or a mini-bar are the main determinants of
room rates in capital cities. Likewise, Zhang, Ye and Law (2011b) used regression models to analyse how
room attributes and hotel class influence room rates in New York City hotels and revealed that hotel
location and room quality are the important determinants of room prices. Chen and Rothschild (2010)
analysed the impact of a variety of attributes on hotel room rates in Taipei and the empirical findings
showed that hotel location, the availability of LED TV, and the presence of conference facilities have
significant effects on both weekday and weekend prices. Furthermore, Schamel (2012) estimated the
willingness to pay for different hotel characteristics and found that the important determining factors
of hotel room prices are popularity ratings, hotel star ratings, weeks of advance booking, and certain
other hotel characteristics such as express check-out, room service, and Internet access. Hung, Shang
and Wang (2010), in addition, applied OLS regression supplemented with quantile regression to provide
a more complex characterization of price determinants in Taiwanese hotels. The OLS results showed
that number of rooms, age of hotel, and number of housekeeping staff per person are the major
determining attributes of hotel room rates, while the quantile regression further refined these results
and demonstrated that hotel age and market conditions are only significant in the high-priced hotel
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
5
category. In another study, Zhang, Zhang, Lu, Cheng and Zhang (2011a) applied geographically weighted
regression and examined how site and situation attributes can affect room prices in Beijing and found
that star rating, hotel age, and location have the greatest influence on hotel room rates. Across these
findings, the most commonly reported factors determining hotel room price are related to physical
characteristics of the offerings (Gibbs et al., 2017), in addition, location and amenities especially
parking are highlighted as further significant influencing factors.
However, while hotel room price has an important role in the traditional hospitality industry (Zhang et
al., 2017), it has also a vital role in the room pricing decision of the sharing economy based
accommodation rental, since price (and the possibility to save money) is one of the main influencers on
the guest’s accommodation selection decisions and on hosts’ profits as well (Tussyadiah & Pesonen,
2016; Zhang et al., 2017). Nevertheless, given the difference between traditional and sharing economy
based accommodation products some of the price determinants of the traditional hospitability industry
are unsuited for the sharing economy, therefore, new price indicators such as host characteristics (e.g.
Superhost status, profile picture), special amenities, and diversified accommodation characteristics
were identified to bridge this gap (Wang & Nicolau, 2017).
As highlighted above, a significant number of studies have investigated the price determinants of hotels,
but only a limited number of papers have explored what factors affect the prices of sharing economy
based accommodation rentals, especially Airbnb. For example, Gutt and Herrmann (2015) examined
how star ratings and rating visibility affect listing prices on the Airbnb platform and reported that rating
star visibility significantly increases prices by an average of 2,69 Euro. Kakar, Franco, Voelz and Wu
(2016) examined the effect of host information (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) on Airbnb
price in San Francisco and found that Hispanic and Asian host charge lower prices (on average 9.6%
and 9.3%) than their white counterparts, while Ert, Fleischer and Magen (2016) reported that a
trustworthy photo of the host may be associated with higher listing price and the higher probability of
being chosen. Li, Pan, Yang and Guo (2016b) analysed that how the distance to the nearest landmark,
the impact of a facility, and the popularity of the nearest landmark affect Airbnb prices and proved
positive effects. Hrobath, Leisch and Dolnicar (2017) identified the drivers of price on entire properties
in Vienna and found that location is the primary driver of prices and properties with more amenities
charge higher prices. Teubner, Hawlitschek and Dann (2017) quantified the price effects of reputation
features using a large scale dataset from 86 German cities and found that indexes such as hosts’ ranking
scores and duration of membership are associated with economic value. Similarly, Gibbs, Guttentag,
Gretzel, Morton and Goodwill (2017) examined the impact of a variety of attributes on the rates of
Airbnb by using the listings information in five Canadian areas reporting that physical characteristics,
location, and host characteristics significantly affect prices. Likewise, Wang and Nicolau (2017) in their
study investigated Airbnb rental offers in 33 cities by using OLS and quantile regression through the
analysis of 25 explanatory variables and highlighted the relationship between these attributes and
accommodation price.
In summary, the number of studies on pricing issues of sharing economy based accommodation rentals
is growing rapidly, however, these focus primarily on large cities, therefore Airbnb’s impact on larger
touristic regions remains unclear. The remaining part of the paper aims to bridge this gap.
Methodology and data
Study area
The area selected for this study was the Lake Balaton Touristic Region in Hungary. We choose this
holiday destination area for several reasons. First, Lake Balaton is the greatest lake in Central Europe,
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
6
and the oldest and most established tourist destination in Hungary (Puczkó & Rátz, 2000; Törzsök et
al., 2017). In 2017, the region hosted more than 2.4 million tourists and the number of overnight stays
totaled 8 million (33% of them international stays), with an average stay of 3.2 nights (CSO, 2019),
generating a huge demand for accommodation services. Thus, behind the Hungarian capital Budapest,
Lake Balaton is the second most visited tourist area in Hungary (Domonkos et al., 2016). Second, the
phenomenon of locals renting out their homes or rooms for tourist exists in the region for decades and
it became a widespread practice. This long-standing tradition is represented in the capacity of
accommodation supply as well, namely, in 2018, 615 commercial accommodation establishments offered
more than 94 thousand bed places, while more than 19 000 private accommodation establishments
(short-term rentals) offered more than 108 thousand bed places in the region (CSO, 2019). These
numbers may also highlight, that unlike large cities, P2P accommodation rental in this region can be
built on existing stocks of holiday homes, and create an extensive capacity for the supply side of sharing
economy based accommodation rental and may scale it dramatically and raise it to a new level. As a
result, Airbnb became a major actor in the hospitality industry in the region and can provide an
appropriate study area and an important benchmark for other Airbnb studies.
Data and variables
The region according to Hungarian law [
1
] consists of 180 settlements and the study was based on
Airbnb listings from this area. The database was compiled by applying web-scraping technology to
gather publicly available information directly from the Airbnb website. Web-scraping is an innovative
and more frequently applied data collecting method (Gibbs et al., 2017; Gunter & Önder, 2018; Horn &
Merante, 2017; Smith et al., 2018) and its essence lies in that a web-crawler (computer program) visits
the selected website and based on specified parameters saves the information displayed on the site into
a database for further analysis (Gyódi, 2017; Olmedilla et al., 2016). The data was collected for July 2018
and Table 1 presents a brief description of the sample and the variables reporting a total of 2417 listings
of the region. Descriptive statistics of the sample highlight that the average rental price for the sampled
Airbnb listings is $89.49, however, offers cover a wide spectrum of different listing prices within the
region indicated by the high standard deviation values. The predominant room types are entire homes
or apartments accounting for the largest proportion (86%), followed by private rooms (14%) and shared
rooms represent only a marginal share (less than 1%). The main characteristics of the Airbnb inventory
in the region are the follows: 94% have a kitchen; 70% offer free wireless internet access and 88% have
a TV; only 7% offer breakfast and 30% are equipped with air conditioning; smoking is not allowed in
67% of the accommodations.
Data analysis
The hedonic pricing method, widely credited to Rosen (1974), is based on the idea that different price
for a product or service can be viewed as composites of attributes and characteristics. Thus, the hedonic
function can reveal how marketable product features will be reflected in the products market prices, in
other words, it can outline, for example, how room/accommodation prices will change when
characteristics of room/accommodation change (Schamel, 2012; Teubner et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2011b).
To assess the accommodation attributes’ economic value and quantify the individual impact of certain
features on Airbnb accommodation price, we conducted hedonic price regression supplemented with
quantile regression (QR) analysis to reveal the nexuses between a dependent variable and a set of
predictor variables. As a dependent variable price per person per night (in a logarithmic form) was
selected, while the independent variables are described in Table1. Hedonic price regression was based
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
7
Table 1. Brief description of the variable list (n=2417)
Variable name
Description of variable/attribute
Mean/
proportion
PRICE
Listed price per night (In US dollars)
89.49
LnPRICE
Price, logged
4.25
DISTANCE
Distance between the location of the Airbnb
accommodation and the lakeside (in km)
2.26
ENTIRE
HOME/APT
Entire home/apartment (Dummy variable)
0.86
PRIVATE ROOM
Private room (Dummy variable)
0.14
SHARED ROOM
Shared room (Dummy variable)
0.005
CAPACITY
The number of people that can be
accommodated
5.55
BEDROOMS
The number of bedrooms
2.32
BED NUMBER
The number of beds
4.35
BATHROOMS
The number of bathrooms
1.53
KITCHEN
Kitchen is available (Dummy variable)
0.94
BREAKFAST
Offer breakfast (Dummy variable)
0.07
INTERNET
Free wireless internet access (Dummy
variable)
0.70
TV
Offer a TV (Dummy variable)
0.88
AIR
CONDITIONING
Offer Air Conditioning (Dummy variable)
0.30
FREE PARKING
Offer free parking (Dummy variable)
0.84
POOL
Offer a pool (Dummy variable)
0.19
PHOTOS
Number of photos about the accommodation
17.53
SMOKING
Smoking is not allowed (Dummy variable)
0.67
on the conditional mean of the dependent variable, estimating the average response of the independent
variable to changes in the explanatory variables (Wang & Nicolau, 2017). In doing so, the following
equation representing the general hedonic model was formulated:
ln(P
i
) = α + ∑
k
β
k
x
ki
+ ε
i
(1)
where ln(P
i
) is the embodiment of the natural logarithmic transformation of the price per person per
night linked with booking i, α is a constant term, the coefficients β
k
are the implicit prices for Airbnb
attributes linked with the k-th independent variable x
ki
representing the associated Airbnb
characteristics, while ε is Normal error (Hung et al., 2010; Masiero et al., 2015; Schamel, 2012). Many
authors suggest that multicollinearity may be a problematic issue in hedonic models (Andersson, 2010;
Yang et al., 2016). Thus, to address this issue, we calculated the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) to detect
the seriousness of multicollinearity. According to Kennedy (2018), multicollinearity is a serious problem
if the VIF value is above ten. In this study, all the VIF values were below the commonly used threshold
point of 10 the highest VIF value was 4.49 indicating that multicollinearity is not a problematic issue
in the present study. Moreover, we have to keep in mind, when assessing the effect of a dummy
independent variable on a log-dependent variable in a log-linear hedonic pricing regression that we
have to transform the coefficient by (e
β
-1), where β is the coefficient and e is the base of natural
logarithm (Gibbs et al., 2017; Halvorsen & Palmquist, 1980), and this gives the estimated effect of the
dummy variables in percentage terms.
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
8
However, the hedonic pricing model may give an incomplete description of the conditional distribution
(Hung et al., 2010; Mosteller & Tukey, 1977) as it only considers the average relationship between price
and the other explanatory variables. Therefore, to move beyond the analysis of the conditional mean of
the dependent variable and provide information about the higher and lower tail behaviour of the
distribution, quantile regression was also applied. In addition to hedonic price regression, QR measures
the effects of individual explanatory variables on the whole distribution of the dependent variable and
may reveal the hidden price-response patterns (Wang & Nicolau, 2017) and further increases the
interpretability of the results (Masiero et al., 2015). According to Koenker (2005), quantile regression
was specified as follows:
Presuming that Y is a real value random variable with a cumulative distribution function F
Y
(y) = P(Y <
y), the τth quantile of Y can be given by
Q
Y
(τ) = inf{y:F
Y
(y) > τ} (2)
where 0 < τ < 1.
Results and discussion
Table 2 reports the results of the OLS including the effects of the independent variables (in percent) on
price and presents the estimated coefficients at the 10
th
, 25
th
, 50
th
, 75
th
, and 90
th
quantiles of the quantile
regression analysis. All the selected dependent variables of the general OLS analysis have a significant
effect on Airbnb price except ‘kitchen’ and ‘photo’, while the quantile regression results are showing us
mixed and more complex and sophisticated results.
Looking first at the variable distance, it is outlined, that consistent with previous studies (Gibbs et al.,
2017; Wang & Nicolau, 2017) location of the Airbnb rental has significant negative effect on price,
indicating that with each additional kilometer the accommodation is located away from the lakeside,
the price decreases with 2.55%. The pattern of the quantile parameters signifies that the negative effect
of distance is greater for lower-priced rentals (Table 3).
The OLS regression estimates that the room type entire home/apt has a noteworthy significant positive
impact on price associated with an increase of 17.87%, indicating that an entire home leads to higher
prices. Moreover, the numbers of the quantile regression provide richer information reflecting a
decreasing pattern, thus, highlighting that the influence of this attribute is higher in the lower-priced
accommodations and lower for the higher-priced accommodations, while at the 90
th
quantile it has an
insignificant effect on accommodation price.
The attributes related to the size of the rentals such as capacity, bedroom number, bed count, and
bathroom number have mixed effects on price. From the OLS results capacity and bedroom number
signifies sizeable positive influence, while somewhat unexpectedly, bed number and bathroom number
are negatively related to rental price, which is inconsistent with previous findings. More specifically,
capacity which embodies the number of people that can be accommodated exhibit that each increase
in capacity (person) may result in a price increase of 10.8% and each additional bedroom can give rise
to Airbnb price by 8.69%. In other words, the accommodation is more expensive if it accommodates
more people and has more bedrooms. Although this result was foreseeable, quantile estimates highlight
the positive impact of capacity on price is consistently stronger for the higher priced-listings, while in
contrast, bedroom number affects lower-priced hotels much more. Furthermore, the OLS regression for
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
9
Table 2. Estimated results of OLS and quantile regression
Variable
OLS
Diff (%)
0.1
0.25
0.5
0.75
0.9
DISTANCE
-0.026***
-2.555
-0.0336***
-0.0254***
-0.0193***
-0.0244***
-0.0184***
ENTIRE
HOME/APT
0.164***
17.869
0.24812***
0.1592**
0.1522***
0.0996*
-0.0145
CAPACITY
0.096***
10.076
0.0346*
0.0901***
0.1041***
0.1273***
0.1416***
BEDROOMS
0.083***
8.692
0.1353***
0.0777***
0.0679***
0.0727***
0.0534*
BED NUMBER
-0.034***
-3.313
-0.0169
-0.0285***
-0.0208***
-0.0271***
-0.0425***
BATHROOMS
-0.056**
-5.424
-0.1371***
-0.1077***
-0.0386**
-0.0235
0.0173
KITCHEN
-0.050
-4.841
-0.0718
-0.0282
-0.0938*
-0.0861
-0.0802
BREAKFAST
0.127*
13.550
0.0943
0.106
0.1117**
0.1728**
0.2024**
INTERNET
0.171***
18.666
0.1189*
0.1706***
0.1429***
0.1625***
0.1557***
TV
-0.151***
-14.047
0.0992
-0.0353
-0.1553***
-0.2035***
-0.2305***
AIR
CONDITIONING
0.317***
37.367
0.2892***
0.2779***
0.3373***
0.3489***
0.3425***
FREE PARKING
-0.206***
-18.599
-0.3041***
-0.2228***
-0.1989***
-0.1577***
-0.1074*
POOL
0.137***
14.661
0.1176*
0.1268**
0.1194***
0.2012***
0.1274**
PHOTOS
0.001
0.108
-0.0029
-0.0029*
-0.0015
0.0025*
0.0049**
SMOKING
-0.156***
-14.403
-0.3066***
-0.3008***
-0.1522***
-0.0510
-0.1308
Notes: * denotes p < 0,05, ** denotes p < 0,01, *** denotes p < 0,001
Table 3. Significant differences among quantiles (p-values)
Variable
0.1, 0.25
0.25, 0.5
0.5, 0.75
0.75, 0.9
DISTANCE
0.086
0.016
0.183
0.077
ENTIRE
HOME/APT
0.198
0.895
0.282
0.019
CAPACITY
0.005
0.339
0.066
0.198
BEDROOMS
0.105
0.685
0.834
0.486
BED NUMBER
0.321
0.473
0.600
0.118
BATHROOMS
0.346
0.013
0.658
0.077
KITCHEN
0.624
0.348
0.876
0.892
BREAKFAST
0.910
0.942
0.478
0.774
INTERNET
0.201
0.393
0.554
0.874
TV
0.216
0.003
0.245
0.589
AIR
CONDITIONING
0.832
0.020
0.730
0.223
FREE PARKING
0.061
0.349
0.276
0.235
POOL
0.870
0.863
0.064
0.010
PHOTOS
0.992
0.055
0.505
0.203
SMOKING
0.883
0.000
0.000
0.478
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
10
the number of beds and the number of bathrooms gives significant negative coefficients indicating that
an additional bed results in a price decrease of 3.31%, while each additional bathroom is associated with
a price decrease of 5.42%. The results of the quantile regression further indicate that bed number does
not significantly influence accommodation price in the 10
th
quantile and the 25
th
50
th
and 75
th
quantile
parameters take higher values than the 90th. The quantile estimates for bathroom number illustrate
that coefficients of the 75
th
and 90
th
quantile are insignificant, while those for 10
th
, 25
th
and 50
th
are
significant, outlining that the provision of bathrooms leads to lower the prices at the lower-end
accommodations (10
th
and 25
th
quantile).
Considering the variable kitchen, no significant effect on price can be outlined according to the results
of both the OLS and the QR analysis, except the 50
th
quantile where the price is negatively influenced.
The reason that the provision of kitchen is not significant might be that most of the accommodations
(94%) are equipped with a kitchen, therefore, it is considered to be a basic service that is not reflected
in the price of the accommodation.
The provision of breakfast has a positive and significant impact on price and host may charge 13.55%
more, if the accommodation provides this service. However, when quantile regression is evaluated at
the lower-priced accommodations (10
th
and 25
th
quantile), the provision of breakfast does not
significantly influence price, but it is significant for the 50
th
, 75
th
, and 90
th
quantile. This is inconsistent
with previous findings (Wang & Nicolau, 2017), but during the interpretation of the results we have to
note, that only 7% of the listings offer breakfast, so this minority group may charge higher prices in
accommodations, which are priced above average, presumably for please their guest and make the
rental more appealing by offering breakfast as an extra amenity.
The provision of air conditioning has the largest positive and significant influence on price in the
sample. The rates for apartments equipped with air conditioning are priced 37.37% higher than those
without this amenity. The quantile coefficients indicate a mixed pattern highlighting that the influence
of this attribute is lower for the lower-priced accommodations and higher for the higher-priced
accommodations reaching its top in the 75
th
quantile. These findings support that in a holiday
destination air conditioning is the comfort function (being the most important in the summer) in an
accommodation for which people usually have to pay the most.
Regarding the free wireless internet access, the OLS estimated a significant and positive influence on
the listed price associated with a price increase of 18.67% in those rooms which have such access. In
addition, the coefficients of the quantile estimates highlight different magnitudes as we move up the
conditional distribution signifying that accommodations in the lowest-priced quantile do not charge as
much for free internet as their higher-priced (50
th
, 75
th
, and 90
th
quantile) competitors, however, the
25
th
quantile listings increase the price most in order to have free internet access.
Between the amenities that were considered, the provision of TV and free parking have a significant
negative effect on price. The OLS regression stresses that rates for accommodations equipped with a
TV are about 14.08% less than those without such appliances. However, quantile estimates signify that
the effect of this variable is not significant for the 10
th
and 25
th
quantile, while coefficients of the other
three quantile highlight that the presence of a TV is less important among the higher-priced listings.
The amenity free parking has also a significant negative impact on prices with decreasing values in the
quantile coefficients. The OLS result highlight the presence of a free parking spot is associated with a
price decrease of 18.6% while the quantile estimates outline that the negative effect is higher for the
lower-priced accommodations and lower for the higher priced ones. These results are inconsistent with
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
11
previous findings on hotel price determinants (Espinet et al., 2003; Thrane, 2007) and Airbnb price
determinants (Wang & Nicolau, 2017) showing that the provision of this attribute in a touristic region
may have a quite different effect than the same variable for a hotel or an Airbnb accommodation in a
city region.
The provision of pool is associated with significant price increase of 14.66% while quantile coefficients
are relatively constant except the 75
th
quantile where positive impact of this amenity is the highest.
The number of available photos about the accommodation does not significantly influence listing price
according to the results of the OLS, however quantile estimates coefficients vary over the conditional
distribution signifying that the 10
th
and 50
th
quantile are insignificant, the 25
th
quantile is significant but
negatively affect accommodation price, while the 75
th
and 90
th
quantile are significant with positive
impact on price, although the degree of this effect is very low.
Finally, the attribute smoking has also a significant negative effect, thus in those apartments where
smoking is allowed host charge 14.40% less than in those where smoking is not permitted. The quantile
estimates highlight that the negative effect is stronger at the lower-tail apartments, however, the
coefficients for the 75
th
and 90
th
quantile are insignificant. The results are consistent with previous
findings (Wang & Nicolau, 2017) and strengthen the assumption that hosts are trying to make their
(smoking)homes more attractive by lowering their prices.
Conclusions
In the present article, we have investigated whether and how accommodation attributes are associated
with Airbnb accommodation prices in a touristic region and quantified these effects by applying OLS
and quantile regression analysis. In line with previous studies, the findings confirm that property-
related attributes significantly influence Airbnb prices in a touristic region as well, although the
magnitude of these effects is very diverse and complex.
The OLS results showed that the provision of air conditioning, free internet, and free parking are the
main determinants of Airbnb price in the sample area, while the number of available photos and the
presence of a kitchen does not significantly influence the price. The quantile regression results further
demonstrated that capacity, the provision of breakfast and TV leads to higher prices among the higher-
priced accommodations, while the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, smoking, and free parking
influence more the prices of lower-end accommodations.
Findings consistent with previous studies
Our results also illustrate that several factors have similar effects with previous findings. The attributes
related to the size of the rentals such as capacity and bedroom number are associated with higher rental
prices in various cities (Cai et al., 2019; Chen & Xie, 2017; Gibbs et al., 2018; Kakar et al., 2016; Wang &
Nicolau, 2017) and according to our results the listings in the Lake Balaton Tourism Region are no
exception. As expected, entire homes also account for significant price increase. As most previous
studies indicated, location greatly matters both in the case of hotels (Espinet et al., 2003; Thrane, 2007;
Zhang et al., 2011a) and Airbnb rentals (Gibbs et al., 2018; Perez-Sanchez et al., 2018; Wang & Nicolau,
2017; Zhang et al., 2017) as well, and so is the case in the Lake Balaton Region. The smoking allowance
is negatively related to Airbnb price in the study area, which is also in line with previous findings
(Kennedy et al., 2018; Wang & Nicolau, 2017), emphasizing that hosts are trying to lower their prices to
make their (smoking)homes more attractive.
Price determinants of Airbnb listing prices in Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary
12
Findings different from previous studies
Surprisingly, in contrast with previous studies, the number of beds and the number of bathrooms have
negative influence on price challenging the findings found for Airbnb listings located in major cities
(Cai et al., 2019; Chen & Xie, 2017; Gibbs et al., 2018; Wang & Nicolau, 2017). These two factors may
indicate that listings in the Lake Balaton Tourism Region have different inner characteristics than the
listings in large cities, thus, host take them differently into consideration during their price setting. It
was also inconsistent with previous research (Gibbs et al., 2018; Perez-Sanchez et al., 2018), that the
number of photos does not have a significant effect on price in general as in only in the 75
th
and 90
th
quantile can be a very low positive impact outlined , although pictures are perceived as important in
building trust (Ert et al., 2016; Teubner et al., 2017) and may be a good indicator of professionalism
(Gibbs et al., 2018). The next finding inconsistent with previous findings lies in the effect of free parking.
Both hotel research (Espinet et al., 2003; Thrane, 2007) and Airbnb research (Cai et al., 2019; Gibbs et
al., 2018; Wang & Nicolau, 2017) states, that free parking is associated with higher prices in various cities.
However, our results highlight, that in a touristic region due to different spatial and settlement
structure, free parking may have a significantly different effect on Airbnb rental prices than in large
cities.
Limitations and directions for future research
Nevertheless, this study contributes to the existing literature on the price determinants of sharing
economy based accommodation rentals. Practically, the analysis may offer potential implications for
stakeholders of the traditional accommodation industry such as managers, decision makers,
accommodation suppliers to analyse and evaluate their market situation and strategies and improve
their services. Moreover, the present paper may provide hosts with insights how to set up their pricing
strategies to increase their revenues, and may help Airbnb employees to design tools and guides that
can offer hints and tips for hosts for ideal price setting.
We acknowledge that like any piece of research, this study has certain limitations that need to be
highlighted. First, it is temporally limited as only one time period is considered (July 2018), therefore
seasonal differences are missing from the analysis, which needs to be addressed in future studies.
Second, the research is geographically limited as the study focused on an exclusive sample area, namely,
the Lake Balaton Touristic Region, Hungary. Therefore, variations between cities or even regions have
not been fully explored, nevertheless, the study provides insight into that certain accommodation
attributes how may affect Airbnb price in a touristic region. Another limitation is that the research
scrutinizes the accommodation attributes affecting accommodation price and the social, economic, and
psychological factors determining the host price-setting strategies are not considered.
In conclusion, the present research provides relevant insights, however, it underscores the need for
further research. Specifically, future research should expand the time-period and research scope
focusing on the difference in price-determinant nexuses between regions and various city-types. It
would be also important to conduct an analysis to reveal the price-setting differences between
professional and non-professional hosts.
Endnotes
[
1
]: The list of settlements is set out in the T/18783 Bill of 2017 Urban Planning Plan for Hungary and
certain priority areas (http://www.parlament.hu/irom40/18783/HTMLT18783.pdf)
Dudás et al. (2020) / European Journal of Tourism Research 24, 2410
13
Acknowledgments
The research has been implemented with the support provided from National Research, Development
and Innovation Fund of Hungary (grant number PD128015), financed under the ‘Geographical
examination of peer-to-peer accommodations in Hungary’ funding scheme.
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Received: 28/03/2019
Accepted: 19/07/2019
Coordinating editor: Stanislav Ivanov