Chapter 1 Introduction

Airbnb, Inc. is an online vacation rental marketplace company founded in 2008. It is a platform for hosts to offer their spare residences and spaces for travelers to stay during their vacation. Airbnb is an additional choice besides traditional hotels. Moreover, it cultivates a sharing-economy by allowing property owners to rent out private properties. According to Investopedia: Airbnb’s Impact on the vacation industry, “Airbnb is valued more highly than several individual hotel chains” (Source link: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/112414/airbnb-brings-sharing-economy-hotels.asp).

In this project, we decided to focus our research on New York City’s Airbnb data as it is one of the hottest cities for tourism. On the other hand, since Airbnb is facing fierce competitions from the hotel industry here, we believe that New York City can be a good case for us to analyze its business success.

We will explore the following questions:

  1. How do the distribution and occupancy of Airbnb’s properties in the New York Metropolitan area change over the years?

  2. What aspects influence the review score of an Airbnb property the most?

  3. How does Covid-19 influence Airbnb businesses in New York City?

Our goal for this project is not only to answer these questions we made but to conduct in-depth research on Airbnb’s business model. By doing this, we want our audience to be better informed about this unicorn tech company.