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Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

beyondstays.com

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Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#21

Post by rajacombinator »

andrewkitchell wrote: post #11
truantbuick wrote: post #2

I can't fault Airbnb hosts if they use this -- if I was a host, I probably would. Nevertheless, it takes some of the charm and advantage out of it for us hostees. Airbnb seemed like a marketplace where sellers for the most part aren't trying to optimize their profits to squeeze out every last buck. Edit: Actually, to be more accurate, it didn't feel like much of a "marketplace" at all, and that's where the charm was.…

Great point -- as we designed this, we thought a lot about how this might impact a marketplace/community (Airbnb) that we love. In talking to a lot of hosts, as well as hosting ourselves, we've learned that (a) pricing your home is really hard, and (b) there is a LOT of work that goes into being a great host. From cleaning your home to welcoming guests and answering inquiries, (not to mention the cost of food, furnit…

This is awesome. I'm very impressed by the concept and design. Do you guys have any kind of development blog, etc? Would love to read more about the development process, timeline, etc, and my initial googling comes up totally blank.

Would definitely use the pricing tool, and maybe the management service too if I were Airbnb'ing my place.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#22

Post by andrewkitchell »

rajacombinator wrote: post #21
andrewkitchell wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point -- as we designed this, we thought a lot about how this might impact a marketplace/community (Airbnb) that we love. In talking to a lot of hosts, as well as hosting ourselves, we've learned that (a) pricing your home is really hard, and (b) there is a LOT of work that goes into being a great host. From cleaning your home to welcoming guests and answering inquiries, (not to mention the cost of food, furnit…

This is awesome. I'm very impressed by the concept and design. Do you guys have any kind of development blog, etc? Would love to read more about the development process, timeline, etc, and my initial googling comes up totally blank. Would definitely use the pricing tool, and maybe the management service too if I were Airbnb'ing my place.

Thank you -- we appreciate that!

We're going to be sharing a lot more in the coming weeks.

There is a lot of interesting data out there, and making sense of that data/making it available is one of our teams goals.

If you have any ideas, send them my way: andrew@beyondstays.com

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#23

Post by andrewkitchell »

graeme wrote: post #20
truantbuick wrote: post #2

I can't fault Airbnb hosts if they use this -- if I was a host, I probably would. Nevertheless, it takes some of the charm and advantage out of it for us hostees. Airbnb seemed like a marketplace where sellers for the most part aren't trying to optimize their profits to squeeze out every last buck. Edit: Actually, to be more accurate, it didn't feel like much of a "marketplace" at all, and that's where the charm was.…

If hosts don't use this, then you get sold out listings. I was in Boston in November. Normally there would be a range of listings in the $60-$120 range, and then some in the ultra-pricey $250-$500 range. Except there was a yatch race on, an ALL but one of the affordable listings was booked. I researched, and there really were dozens of listings that were normally cheap, but they were full. I fortunately got the last…

Good point -- in response we'd say: 'pricing is hard!'

Its pretty rare that an individual hosts will have enough information to accurately/comfortably price their home.

By studying larger trends across a municipality, we think we can help paint a clearer picture for these hosts, both for short term price surges & also for how they should set the base price their home.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#24

Post by thelogos »

Am I the only one who has noticed that hotel is cheaper than Airbnb? Especially in SE asian countries, you can actually haggle hotel prices if staying for extended amount of time.

Even without that, it's still cheaper in some cases to stay at a hotel and with the added bonus of room service.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#25

Post by thelogos »

ar7hur wrote: post #12

Somewhat scary to see that at around $190 for one bedroom, there are nights when AirBnb is more expensive than 4-star hotels like Westin.

It's not unusual for airbnb to be more expensive than hotel.

When I was in vietnam, all I had to do was go around to a couple of hotels and ask for the price in person.

Many hotels are not advertised online. And even though the space is smaller, I prefer it over airbnb. More anonymity and room service.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#26

Post by calbear81 »

nostromo wrote: post #3

I'd personally love a travel site that aggregates Airbnb & VRBO & Hotels. Listing everything a city has to offer on a single site could be a real differentiator to sites like Kayak.

We've explored integrating other property types on Room77.com in addition to our hotel metasearch but there are some things we encountered that we need to work through first:

- Hotel metasearch is a real-time pricing and booking option. VRBO and AirBnB by and large are lead generation based so you don't have real time availability on a majority of the properties. This means that a lot of the listings may already be booked and you wouldn't know until you contact the owner.

- Location accuracy is a challenge. Home owners don't want to provide exact addresses due to privacy reasons so for a lot of properties, owners have chosen to provide an "approximate" location which leads to a lot of properties in a neighborhood sharing the same exact lat/long and a lot of stacked pins or clusters on a map.

For reference, here's a general idea of the number of property types: 300,000+ hotels, 550,000+ vacation homes, 300,000+ airbnb listings (lots of cross listing with vacation rental sites for sure), 50,000+ hostels = ~1M properties bookable after deduplication.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#28

Post by NickSharp »

jenoneal wrote: post #19
nostromo wrote: post #3

I'd personally love a travel site that aggregates Airbnb & VRBO & Hotels. Listing everything a city has to offer on a single site could be a real differentiator to sites like Kayak.

We do this! Check out http://www.tripping.com/ Tripping is the top metasearch site for vacation rentals with over 1 million homes worldwide. We also have the richest data set in the industry, so it'll be fun to see how our data compares with BeyondStays.

Tripping is great! Two thumbs up.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#29

Post by graeme »

andrewkitchell wrote: post #23
graeme wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hosts don't use this, then you get sold out listings. I was in Boston in November. Normally there would be a range of listings in the $60-$120 range, and then some in the ultra-pricey $250-$500 range. Except there was a yatch race on, an ALL but one of the affordable listings was booked. I researched, and there really were dozens of listings that were normally cheap, but they were full. I fortunately got the last…

Good point -- in response we'd say: 'pricing is hard!' Its pretty rare that an individual hosts will have enough information to accurately/comfortably price their home. By studying larger trends across a municipality, we think we can help paint a clearer picture for these hosts, both for short term price surges & also for how they should set the base price their home.

I also expect you could help mobilize spare capacity. I know some hosts who rent out their space one weekend a year and make $500-$600. They just go on a short vacation when the major festival hits town.

They get easy money, guests find space. With more spare capacity, I'd bet the average price would drop and more people would be happy.

Re: Surge Price Predictor for Airbnb Hosts

#30

Post by jenoneal »

NickSharp wrote: post #28
jenoneal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do this! Check out http://www.tripping.com/ Tripping is the top metasearch site for vacation rentals with over 1 million homes worldwide. We also have the richest data set in the industry, so it'll be fun to see how our data compares with BeyondStays.

Tripping is great! Two thumbs up.

Thanks Nick!
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