What should I expect when considering different room types on Airbnb? — Data analysis of Airbnb listings in Boston

Part of the Udacity Data Scientist Nano Degree Program

Introduction

Are you planning a trip recently? As vaccinations are becoming more widely available, it’s clear that people worldwide are eager to get back to traveling. A recent survey revealed that 75% of travelers have already booked, or plan to book, a post-vaccine trip in the next three-six months.

When planning a trip, will you consider booking a room on Airbnb? Since 2008, Airbnb is an option for those who don’t want to book traditional hotels. Personally speaking, I have used Airbnb several times.

This blog aims to briefly analyze three different areas (# of listings, price, and amenities) of listings on Airbnb using the CRISP-DM process. The dataset is available on Inside Airbnb, an independent, non-commercial website that allows you to explore how Airbnb is really being used in cities around the world:

http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html

CRISP-DM (Cross Industry Process for Data Mining) is a process model with six phases that naturally describes the data science life cycle. It consists of 6 phases:

1. Business Understanding
2. Data Understanding
3. Data Preparation
4. Modeling
5. Evaluation
6. Deploy

However, the 6 phases aren’t necessary for all the projects; a lot of questions can be answered without building models. In this post, I will apply CRISP-DM steps 1,2,3,5, and 6 to the Airbnb Boston datasets.

Business Understanding

Boston is one of the most visited cities in the world. I will discuss some questions that those who plan to travel to Boston and consider Airbnb would care about.

1. How many rooms are available in each of the communities? How many entire apartments and private rooms are there in each community?
2. What are the differences between the amenities provided by the entires apartment and the private rooms?
3. How much does one person have to pay in each community? Is an entire apartment more expensive?
4. How much more does a person need to pay to book a private room with a private bathroom?

Airbnb listings are categorized into the following home types: Entire home/apt, Private room, Shared room, and Hotel rooms. However, the entire home/apt and private room takes more than 98% of the listing, so this article only focuses on the Entire home/apt and Private room

1. How many rooms are available in each of the communities? How many entire apartments and private rooms are there in each community?

25 neighborhoods are listed on Airbnb in the Boston area on 2/20/2021, the scarping day. There are considerable differences in the available rooms in each community. The neighborhood with the most listings is Dorchester (370 rooms available). The second is Downtown (292 rooms are available). Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Brighton are ranked three to five.

The distribution of entire apartments and private rooms varies significantly in each community. This difference is well reflected in Dorchester and Downtown, which are ranked first and second. Private rooms dominate in Dorchester, while most of the houses downtown are entire apartments. The third-ranked Jamaica Plain has an even distribution of private rooms and entire apartments.

For Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Brighton, part of the reason they are at the top is that they occupy a large area. They are the four largest communities in the west and south-central of Boston. The neighborhood with the second most available rooms, Downtown, is not very large, but the density of rooms is high. There are many communities in that area, and there are also many scientific research institutions, museums, and shopping malls.

2. What are the differences between the amenities provided by the entires apartment and the private rooms?

The amenities in the rooms are essential factors to consider. Many people intuitively think that the entire apartment will provide much more amenities than the private room. Really?

The following table shows the number and percentage of rooms with the top 15 most common amenities in an entire apartment( the amenities are listed in the first column). It shows that the entire apartment does win in most of the amenities. Private rooms only win in heating; Wifi, Smoke alarm, Carbon monoxide alarm and Dedicated workspace rate are basically the same.

The fact that the entire apartment will win is true even when we look at the top 15 most common amenities in a private room. The primary reason is that the entire room owns more amenities overall: The first 8 facilities of the entire room have a provision rate greater than 90%, while only 3 facilities of the private room have a provision rate greater than 90%.

The amenities with the most considerable difference in terms of provision rate are shown in the following table: entire rooms have an overwhelming advantage on TV. If there is only one TV in the home, it is usually installed in the living room. Free street parking is surprising. Private rooms‘ advantage in parking may be attributed to their locations, which are more friendly to parking.

3. How much does one person have to pay in each community? Is an entire apartment more expensive?

Price is a significant consideration when choosing a room type. Many people intuitively think that the entire apartment will be more expensive than the private room. Really?

Comparison of the accommodation cost is tricky. It is not fair to directly compare the price of a large house that can accommodate 6 people with a small room that can only accommodate 1. So I created a new metric: the average price each person needs to pay — price/the number of people that can be accommodated, to compare the prices of different listings.

As you can see, the average price of the entire apartment is indeed much higher than that of the private room. However, please pay attention to the variance: it is very large. This means that the price of each type of room spans a very large range, and we better break them down into different communities.

In different communities, the average price comparison between the entire apartments and private rooms is very different. For example, although on average the entire apartment is more expensive than the private room, in the West End community, the private room is nearly twice as expensive as the entire apartment! Among the 25 communities, the entire apartments are more expensive in 14 communities (the community names are displayed in blue), and the private rooms are more expensive in 11 communities (the community names are displayed in red).

Even in the same community, the price of the same type of rooms varies significantly among individuals since there are too many factors affecting the price： whether the location is convenient, whether it has been recently renovated, and how many facilities are in the room. Therefore, the average price of each community is only a rough guide.

4. How much more does a person need to pay to book a private room with a private bathroom?

If people choose private rooms, private bathrooms will significantly impact the experience. As a result, many people want to know how much more they need to pay for a private bathroom. I compared both the list price and the average price per person (the list price adjusted by the number of accommodates) and found that whether there is a private bathroom has a significant impact on price.

The following results show that guests need to pay $42.19 more to book a private room with a private bathroom, under 95% confidence level, the confidence interval is [31.56, 52.82], which is pretty high.

If we focus on the average price per person, people need to pay $9.4 more to live in a private room with a private bathroom, under 95% confidence level, the confidence interval is [4.38, 14.42].

Conclusion

In this post, we addressed four questions about the Boston area’s Entire home/apt and Private rooms listed on Airbnb; here are some takeaways.

1. Among the 25 neighborhoods listed, Dorchester, Downtown, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and Brighton’s available rooms are in the top 5. Downtown is not very big, but the density of rooms is enormous, while the other 4 neighborhoods are large in terms of area. The distribution of entire apartments and private rooms varies greatly in each community.
2. Entire apartments provide more amenities, but if you are looking for rooms that provide free street parking, maybe a private room is a better choice.
3. In different communities, the average price comparison between the entire apartments and private rooms is very different. The entire apartments are more expensive in 14 communities, and the private rooms are more expensive in 11 communities.
4. Guests need to pay $42.19 more to book a private room with a private bathroom. If we focus on the average price per person, a guest needs to pay $9.4 more.