Abstract
After the outbreak of COVID-19, Italian authorities implemented a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the pandemic. Short-term rentals in Rome, a famous tourist destination worldwide, are bound to be severely affected. To reveal the changes, we collected the pandemic-related information, including the changed confirmed cases and the implemented lockdown policies in Italy, and conducted data mining on the longitudinal short-term rental data (Year of 2018, 2019, and 2020) derived from Airbnb platform. By comparing with the normal situation, we found that Rome’s short-term rental reservation rate began to decline in March 2020, a decrease of about 50% compared with previous years; the distribution of reservations spread from the city center to the outer suburbs; the proportion of foreign tourists declined sharply, the proportion of foreign tourists has dropped by 60% in the first wave; the mood of tourists has also fluctuated significantly, especially in foreign tourists. By revealing the impact of the pandemic on short-term rentals in Rome, this study can help the government grasp the situation timely and provide a basis for formulating corresponding policies. The workflow can also provide an evaluation framework for monitoring short-term rentals in other cities in the future.
