10 years of Airbnb reviews in Florence

The contributions develop a spatio-temporal analysis of 12.126 georeferenced listings (accommodations) and 651.515 reviews left by Airbnb users on the platform from 2008 to 2019 in Florence (Italy). Results show that the “interfacing process” is reinforcing the cumulative mechanism over space and time; in this context, reviews act as an echo chamber for the space of flows, forging some specific areas that meet the requirements of the Airbnb community. If the value assigned to Airbnb listings through reviews and ratings displays a strong core-periphery pattern, it is interesting to see how such value is a summation of different, overlapping meanings conveyed by the reviews. The Network shows the main topics in Airbnb reviews in Florence. Node size is proportionally to the eigenvector centrality; edges indicate the direction and frequency of the topics relationship; colours indicate categories: influencers (blue); facilitators (yellow); scaffolders (orange); outsiders (green). Furthermore, based on the review’s density we created the ‘Airbnbscapes map’ where the city skyline has been built on the basis of the density of review received per each specific area.