Assessing the Effects of COVID-19 on Accommodations Availabilities and Prices

In 2020, a new pandemic, named COVID-19, has been spreading all over the world, causing a reduction in activities, including in the tourism sector. This paper tries to quantify the effects of COVID-19 on accommodations, with a particular focus on prices trend and accommodation availability. Experiments simulated more than 400 accommodation bookings over the period of time before, during, and after the wave of the pandemic caused by COVID-19. The analysis was done for the city of Pisa, but it could be generalized to all the other cities, provided that there is an availability of data. The typology with the highest drop in availability was that of 2-star hotels, with a maximum decrease of 66%. Even the 4 and 3-star hotels were clearly affected by the pandemic, recording maximum drops of 36% for 4-star hotels and 25% for 3-star hotels. Regarding the analysis of prices trend, the categories most affected by the pandemic were hotels, hostels, and tourist villages, which recorded significant price increases. The major novelty of this paper involves the definition of a strategy, which can be used to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on accommodations, as well as the release of the DOTApy software for the extraction of data.