How can new hosts have a good start and earnings at Airbnb?
By: Ian Akoto
Tags: Airbnb Host, Data Science, Business Strategy, Analysis

A CRISP-DM process on Seattle Airbnb dataset

Introduction

Airbnb is a great place to start earning from hosting your house, apartment etc. to travelers. But this can become really rough especially when one is new to the system. There are so many ways that can get you started on Airbnb and start earning right away. These factors range from choosing what type of property to list on Airbnb, the various types of amenities set in your apartment or home and so much more.

As newbies in this area, this can become a headache and to even add more pain to it, if not well considered, you might not earn at all in this competitive space.

For me I considered three questions to address this challenge. Although yours might be different, I choose these three questions as key to enable new hosts make better decision when starting on Airbnb and earn big.

What type of property are most people interested in? What are the characteristics of listing that influence their price? When is the best time to host a listing for booking?

To help in this investigation, I used the Seattle Airbnb Open Data to take a closer look at the questions.

TAKEAWAY 1: What type of Property are most people interested in?

Let’s assume you own two properties, that is, a Bungalow and an apartment in Seattle, USA. You want to start listing one of them on Airbnb but don’t know which one will really make you earn. Will you decide to list the two properties on Airbnb and see which ones people in Seattle want or you will choose by observing a popular trend?

From the the graph, we can see that the number of people who book a house is way more than that of a Bungalow. This tells us that between a house and a bungalow, a house would be a good pick for a new host to start earning on Airbnb. Apartment and house are the properties most people in Seattle are interested in.

TAKEAWAY 2: What are the characteristics of listing that influence their price?

In here, we considered 3 main characteristics:

Amenities

Bed type

Room type

I developed a model based on our data to predict the prices of listings on Airbnb. Gathering the insights the model made, I was able to extract the absolute coefficient for the features. The higher the absolute coefficient of the feature, the higher its influence on price.

Looking at the chart above, which shows how the various amenities influence price, we definitely see that Doorman had about 50+ in the absolute coefficient, which tells us that Including the amenity doorman in your listing places your listing at a very high price.

What about bed type, what bed should one choose to increase listing pricing?

Following the chart above, Couch seems to have the highest influence on price with 8.66 absolute coefficient

And lastly, what of Room type?

From the chart above, we see that shared room seems to raise the price more than private rooms

TAKEAWAY 3: When is the best time to host a listing for booking on Airbnb?

From the analysis of the data, we could see a pattern in the number of people who travel each month from year to year. As seen in the chart below, there seems to be a rise from early August/September almost each year.

What then is the best time to travel?

We see again in this chart from the analysis that showed the highest number of travelers each year with their respective months. Again, September showed promising resulting when t comes to the number of people who travel or relocate.

CALL TO ACTION

If you are new to Airbnb and want to start earning by hosting your property, consider these answered questions

What type of property are most people interested in? Most people in Seattle are interested in Homes and Apartment property types.

What are the characteristics of listing that influence their price?

For amenity include Doorman. For Room type, make it shared. For Bed Type, include or choose a couch

When is the best time to host a listing for booking on Airbnb? September is the best time to host your property on Airbnb and start earning.

To see more about this analysis, see the link to my Github available here.