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airbnb Analysis- Boston & Seattle

5 min readNov 18, 2020

An Attempt at analyzing reviews and pricing

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airbnb

Airbnb provides a platform for hosts to accommodate guests with short-term lodging and tourism-related activities. Since 2008, guests and hosts have used Airbnb to travel in a more unique, personalized way. As part of the Airbnb Inside initiative, this data describes the listing activity of home-stays in Seattle & Boston

Motivation — Comparing the Listings in Boston and Seattle in terms of Pricing, features that influence pricing, sentiments and review score.

Seattle has a total of 84949 reviews from 3585 listing and Boston has a total of 68257 reviews from 3818 listings

Following questions could be answered by analyzing the Boston and Seattle airbnb data together.

1. What do we understand about the availability of listings and their price over time
2. What are the most common amenities
3. Which areas are popular by way of rating score
4. What do we understand from the sentiments of people writing reviews

Analysis

✅ What do we understand about the availability of listings and their price over time

Availability in Seattle from Jan to March and then remains constant for majority the year. Boston is not fluctuating much remains constant through out the year. In September only ~ 70% room available.

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In 2017 Seattle starts low during the beginning of the year, then increases and remains constant for the remainder of the year. September in Boston sees a huge dip in an otherwise relatively topsy-turvy pricing. This is interesting

In 2017 Seattle has a consistent availability pattern when compared to Boston. Boston seems to have a big dip in both pricing and availability during September

Overall it seems Seattle has listings, consistently available across the year when compared to Boston. In terms of pricing, Boston seems more pricey except during the big dip when compared to prices in Seattle. Average price of Boston listing over the year is $ 98 and $92.5 in Seattle

Most of the high price segments are in Boston

✅ What are the most common amenities

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Seattle

Most common amenities in Seattle seem to be the Doorman, pool, hot tub, suitable for events and Gym.

This is quite interesting. Wireless internet seems to be very low in terms of common amenities

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Boston

Boston seems to favor wireless internet, heating, kitchen, essentials and smoke detector.

This gives us an insight of the kind of place we are visiting. Looks like Seattle advertises itself to be a proper getaway place while Boston stays true to its college city with importance to wireless internet and heating. just my notion

✅ Which areas are popular by way of rating score

For Boston, Jamaica plain , South end ,Boston waterfront , North end are the most popular places to stay.

This was observed comparing the score rating. They are concentrated more towards the city

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BOSTON

For Seattle popular places are Harrison/Denny-Blaine, Madrona, Southwest Mangolia, North Delindge.

These places seem to be distributed and are not concentrated towards the city as in Boston

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SEATTLE

✅ What do we understand from the sentiments of people writing reviews

Plot of the Sentiment score across neighborhood shows the sentiments of people by neighborhood and the reviews they have provided.

Boston & Seattle sentiments by Neighborhood

As we move across the graph, the pricing is also lowered but this does not actually describe the situation with pricing. the top listings based on sentiments are not necessarily highly priced.

Sentiment Analysis reinforces the findings from review score rating. the top neighborhoods are an almost match, in terms of people expressing positive comments

✅ Conclusion

  1. Features that influence the pricing are quite similar at both places. Few changes are due to the type of listing available in either city.
  2. Seattle appears to have more availability, which may be the reason for comparatively lower prices than Boston. Boston may have low availability but the prices are higher
  3. Amenities that are being offered speak a lot about the places. Hot Tub pools, suitable for events makes it look like Seattle is a place to visit for a complete get away and Boston comes off in a different light when it concentrates in internet and other basic home amenities. Importantly, Seattle seems less pricey
  4. We listed the popular places to stay with listing includes location with at least 10 reviews. This is based on review rating score.
  5. However it does show that moving from those places with good polarity scores to lower polarity scores does show a slight decline in prices. A lot of the higher priced locales seem to have a very low polarity score. So any conclusion here requires more analysis