How are Airbnb hosts in NY adapting in the midst of Covid-19?
By: John Oh
Tags: New York, Python, Covid 19, Data Visualization, Airbnb

How are Airbnb hosts in NY adapting in the midst of Covid-19?

It’s no secret the travel industry has been impacted severely by Covid-19. A few days ago, Discover CEO detailed consumer spending related to the travel category has essentially dropped to zero. That surely would have impacted the Airbnb hosts in New York City, epicenter of U.S. Coronavirus.

Data

I was interested in somehow measuring Covid-19 impact on Airbnb hosts in NY. The data from Apr-2019 to Apr-2020 (monthly frequency) are sourced from Inside Airbnb (listings.csv). Although they provide more detailed data, listing files are good for visualization without much cleaning involved. There are a total of 645,458 listings in the data.

Snapshot of listings data

Descriptive Statistics

Availability Trend

An Airbnb host can set up a calendar for their listing so that it is only available for a few days or weeks a year or all year around (except for when it is already booked). “High Availability”, defined as available more than 60 days per year, can indicate units are vacant at the moment of data is being scraped.

The percentage of High Availability increased close to a 4 percentage point from Apr-2019 to Apr-2020.

When breaking down by Borough, popular locations such as Manhattan and Brooklyn also show increasing trends of “High Availability” units.

Price Trend

The average price of “High Availability” units dropped to $185 in April. This drop is mainly caused by units in Manhattan, the average price of Airbnb in other boroughs remains almost unchanged.

Change in Listing Descriptions

So far, it’s not surprising that there are more available units in NY and their prices have come down. So, the question is what are the Airbnb hosts doing to combat the situation?

The listing files contain descriptions of each listing. By analyzing descriptions, we can sense how owners are reacting to the situation. In March, listings mentioning “Covid”, “Corona”, or “Quarantine” started to show up. Some examples of March listings mentioning Covid/Corona: The Cozy Queen | Luxe Bnb | Clean & COVID free, Traditional NYC Oasis — Corona Disinfected, Quiet garden apt UWS, hide-away from Corona Virus.

However, those listings mentioning Covid/Corona decreased in April. Instead, listings containing “hospital(s)”, “healthcare”, or “health” started to increase. One particular listing changed its description from “ANOTHER BEACH PARTY/BREAKFAST” in March to “St. John’s Hospital Staff/Volunteers” in April.

NY Map

As of Apr-08–2020, these are top 10 neighborhoods where listings containing “hospitals” or “healthcare” are located.

A map of New York city with listings mentioning hospitals/healthcare, etc.

Summary

Needless to say, it is a challenging time for Airbnb hosts. Airbnb introduced a program to offer healthcare staff and first responders places to stay while safely distancing from their own families. In New York, even though the number of listings mentioning hospitals/health care, etc. is still small, we can see there is a growing trend of owners providing stays to frontline responders. It shows that Airbnb hosts are adapting to the current situation to minimize the impact.