Enhancing Attraction Experiences Through Home Sharing: Evidence from Customer Review Analytics

Abstract

Customer experiences largely define the success of service operations. As home sharing continues to change how consumers travel and penetrate local markets, we study the impact of home sharing on customer experiences at local travel attractions. Our empirical strategy hinges on the staggered rollout of home sharing across attractions at times. We first found that home sharing positively affects customer experiences at attractions. Using large-scale property-level customer reviews, we then traced down individual review-level content features describing host support that can explain the impact of home sharing on attraction experiences. Specifically, the mechanism centers on local travel support from hosts who provide saving tips, share attraction knowledge, and facilitate travel planning while consumers stay at their home sharing properties. We further explore the intriguing heterogeneity of the home sharing impact, unveiling the unintended consequence of overtourism, especially at nationally renowned attractions and during peak season. Finally and fortunately, host support manifests to mitigate the negative impact of home sharing and remains a potential solution to address overtourism. Collectively, these findings add evidence to the sophisticated roles of home sharing in local markets and provide timely implications on customer experience management to service operation practitioners and attraction stakeholders.