Seattle Airbnb Listings — an analytical picture
In the pre-pandemic world, the popularity of Airbnb as an alternative to traditional hotels had been touching new highs, especially among travellers to and from North America and Europe. So this only makes it natural for data curious nerds like me to take a peek at the reams of data the listings generate. A good place to start is Seattle — the largest city in Washington state as well as the Pacific Northwest of the US, apart from being a picture postcard location.
I used the Seattle Airbnb listings data from 2016 to take a closer look at the listings, particularly houses and apartments, as they are the most commonly preferred options for travellers in terms of the flexibilities they offer. Specifically, I was interested in answering the following questions:
- Do groups of four or more people get reasonably
priced (not exceeding USD 250/night) houses and apartments
in Seattle? - If yes, which neighbourhoods are popular among such
groups, in terms of average monthly reviews? - Are there neighbourhoods which are being overlooked but are popular and can be marketed more for such travellers?
While the data may appear a bit dated, it still offers a decent snapshot of what Airbnb listings in a prominent US city look like.
A preliminary look at the listings suggests that most listings do not cross the USD 200–250 mark, with a median of USD 109. Majority of listings also have strict cancellation policies.
The average number of reviews per month was 2 for the listings, with one outlier receiving as many as 12.
As for areas with maximum proportion of listings by neighbourhood, it’s the ‘Other Neighbourhoods.’
As for prices by property type, houses and apartments are in the upper ranges, with some exceptions like Boats, given their appeal to those who would want to go fancy, perhaps.
Apartment Listings
Apartments offer maximum flexibility to travellers who want to an experience as close to home as possible when they stay for work or pleasure in a big city, for extended periods usually. The option to cook one’s own meals is one of the biggest advantages in this regard. Houses offer a more space when it comes to this. So I decided to look specifically at apartment and house listings.
Apart from missing values and dropping/imputing them, the prices also had to be converted to integer values from strings. Yes, one listing also had 0 bedrooms in the value field.
For at least four or more guests, listings with at least two bedrooms would work. After a little cleaning up and taking into account listings that need a minimum of two nights’ stay and have at least two or more reviews per month, most apartments appear to have either two or three bedrooms, hence I treated them as categorical variables. And these listings are within the USD 150–160 per night range.
The full map of apartment listings can be viewed here.
A little reminder is also necessary that more reviews per month can also mean negative reviews, but that didnt seem to be the case in this subset, going by the individual numerical reviews scores at least.
For apartment listings which accommodate four or more guests and have at least two or more bedrooms (but without the monthly review subsetting), around 41% listings are Downtown, while 19% are in Other neighbourhoods and around 13% are in Capitol Hill. Among these Downtown listings, majority of the listings are in the USD 200–450 range, while those for Other neighbourhoods are within USD 250-odd.
After narrowing it down to two or more reviews per month, the share of Other neighbourhoods goes up to around 30%, while Downtown is now second at around 28%. So, lower prices do tend to attract more guests, if monthly reviews is to be considered a parameter. And listings within the USD 250 upper bound also have better annual availability.
It is also worth considering that the number of bedrooms at this stage goes up again for apartments in some areas when the data is grouped by neighbourhoods, with some listings in Other neighbourhoods having as many as six bedrooms available.
With regards to annual availability, the Other neighbourhoods do well again.
As for price distribution of apartment listings with these specifications, the median is at USD 149.5
House Listings
Houses, as mentioned earlier, offer more freedom in terms of space, especially when it comes to bigger groups of guests. An initial look at the house listings suggests a high concentration in Other neighbourhoods.
View the complete map of house listings here.
After the initial subsetting for listings that require at least two nights and accommodate at least four people, the median house price is USD 189, while around 30% listings are in Other neighbourhoods, followed by 14.5% in Central Area and 10.3% in West Seattle.
After subsetting further for houses with at least two bedrooms and getting at least two reviews per month, the median price is USD 160.
As for prices by neighbourhood in this subset, Capitol Hill, Lake City and Queen Anne are at the top, followed by Magnolia and Ballard.
When it comes to more bedrooms though, Lake City dominates.
But the proportion of listings in this subgroup still remains higher (as a single largest share) for Other neighbourhoods, with 18.5%, followed by 15.4% for Central Area.
In terms of annual availability, listings in the USD 100–250 odd range score quite well.
On the other hand, Central Area, Other neighbourhoods and Queen Anne do better than other areas in terms of monthly reviews, while listings within USD 300 also get monthly reviews.
Conclusions
As such, the findings do indicate the listings with the defined specifications fit the price range, getting in a decent amount of reviews per month as well. In terms of neighbourhoods, Queen Anne seemed to score quite well on all the parameters for apartment as well as house listings for groups of four or more people. But what I would like to point out is the consistent presence of the ‘Other neighbourhoods’ category at many points of the analysis. While more well known areas of any metropolitan city tend to get preference among guests, it may not always be the case. Given that Other neighbourhoods had competitive pricing, it’s not surprising that they’re pulling in as many (if not more) reviews as compared to their well-known counterparts. So, a stronger push for these listings in terms of search engine and display ads may be a good idea, especially in the post pandemic world where people will be looking to derive more value for their money (without compromising on health and safety standards, of course).
View the full code for the analysis here.
