Tourism is one of the most important sector for any country. Recently, when I had been to US and was staying in a place booked using Airbnb. There were couple of other guests with me who were from all different places but hosted by the same host. Host was friendly and curious to know what is the general behavior of the customers. So I picked up a Kaggle data set of Airbnb that describes the listing activity of home stays in Seattle, WA.

He wanted to know if guests get attracted if the price of the stay is reduced or if more amenities are provided or if the cancellation policy is not rigid or if bigger house size helps.

Data Source : https://www.kaggle.com/airbnb/seattle

The data gave the following results:

Part I : Size of the house, type of the property and providing amenities.

From the analysis, it is evident that people are more likely to stay in an entire house/apartment than sharing the rooms.

People also tend to come in groups more than couples. This might be the case specially during the holidays. Hosts who can host 5–6 people are likely to get more bookings.

Most of the hosts provide around 15 amenities but there are very few who provide more amenities. Providing more amenities does have an impact.

So my advice to the host was that he should be able to host 5–6 people in an apartment/house with more number of amenities.

PART II : Cancellation policy and reducing the price.

Considering the cancellation policies, it is intuitive also that people like to have a flexible cancellation policy and data also says that moderate/flexible cancellation policy attracts guests.

(If you have 2 properties to book and if everything is same, there are all chances that you would go with the property which have easy cancellation policy, isn’t it??)

There was similar occupancy rate for both low and high pricing properties. Which also means that people consider quality place and less likely to compromise over that.

PART III : How is Airbnb performing over the years, when is it getting most of its customer

This was out of my curiosity to see how Airbnb is performing over the years.

I must say that they have a good market. Customers are increasing year after year. Of course, there are more bookings during winter and spring holidays.

PART IV : What should be Airbnb’s future plan?

Making more profits is the fundamental goal of every organization. Similarly, from the data if Airbnb want to increase their profits, they need to pay attention to hosts how could host more people by renting out the entire property and providing more number of amenities.

There are more occupies for minimum night stay of 5–6. This can possibly be during holidays. If the property is good, an entire house can be rented out for 5–6 nights minimum.