Airbnb has proven that hospitality, generosity, and the simple act of trust between strangers can go a long way. Joe Gebbia (Airbnb, Co-Founder)
Airbnb has revolutionized the travel industry. Take New York for example. As of 2017, there were ~300 operating hotels around the city. That same year, there were over 41,000 private homes, condos, tents, caves, and even a lighthouse, available for rent in the Big Apple. A heat-map of available Airbnbs can be seen to the left. Can you tell where the heart of the city is?
The New York Airbnb dataset I am using (huge shutout to Tom Slee for the data), contains listings across the city as well as attributes that describe the listing on the app: price, room type, and number of bedrooms are just a few examples. Let’s start by analyzing how these different attributes relate (via a correlation matrix).
The first thing I notice is that the number of reviews has high correlation to overall satisfaction (or rating) of an Airbnb property. This should be unsurprising – if a property has more reviews, more people have, theoretically, stayed at the property due to the quality of the listing.
Even so, are you looking to head to the city that never sleeps? Well there are some factors to consider when looking at price alone. It appears that the biggest influencers of price, in our dumbed down data-set, are the number of bedrooms, the property type (whether it is a cave or a lighthouse), the room type, and the borough it is located in. Let’s focus our scope by looking at data grouped by room type and borough.
ROOM TYPE
Which room would you stay in?
BOROUGH
What about borough?
Personally, if I was traveling to New York City, I would opt for the private room. There is a large count of them, and they tend to be ~$150 cheaper per night, while only being rated 0.3 (out of 5) less, than an entire home, on average. Surprisingly, shared rooms have higher satisfaction than private rooms on average. This must be skewed by extroverted travelers…
When picking a borough, there are some clear favorites (when assessing both price and overall satisfaction): Staten Island and The Bronx. The clear outlier, in terms of price, is Manhattan. This borough does, however, have the third best average satisfaction – but, I’m not sure it justifies the price jump. In either case, the average hotel price for hotels in New York City is around $350. These Airbnbs look cheap now, don’t they?
While my analysis was modest – don’t blame me, blame graduate school – more comprehensive information can be found online. Want to know the effect that Airbnb has on communities? Check out Inside Airbnb.
Have an idea for analysis? Send me links, files, and everything in-between, and I’ll take a look!
Enjoy this post? Take a look at past posts:
Willewonka's Data Factory 