How Covid-19 affected Airbnb business in Dublin

Airbnb has been growing fast during the last years. However, during 2020 with the abrupt decrease of travelling and tourism (at least internationally) due to the covid 19, we should expect a significative drop in business.

To check the effect of the pandemic on Airbnb, a dataset of listed homes and also calendar of rented homes was downloaded from Airbnb open data, link here. The data contains listed properties from August 2019 and same month in 2020.

The main objectives were:

1- Determine the drop of homes avaliability in August 2020 compared to same month in 2019

2- Compare the changes in prices from the different types of airbnb places:
— Full apartment / house
— Single room
— Flat
— Double room

3- The last objective of this analysis is to understand the contribuition of airbnb to the rent crisis in Dublin.

There was a decrease in listed Airbnb properties in 2020.

Just by checking the number of listed properties we could see that there was a 16.46% of decrease in Dublin properties in August 2020 compared with the same month in 2019.

There was no difference in prices from the same properties listed in 2019 and in 2020.

To check the difference in prices, the same properties prices were compared from 2020 and 2019. A repeated measure t-test showed no difference between prices, although the tourism sector was one of the most affect industry by the covid.

The prices were very similar during the pandemic.

We also checked differences between flats, single rooms, double rooms and full houses and apartments, there was no difference in the t-test for these prices between 2019 and 2010

We next check the difference in prices of different types of properties listed on Airbnb, but there was no significative difference.

The number of Airbnb full houses / apartments listed

Although it is a simple question, dubliners have been protesting against Airbnb in Ireland. the rents in Dublin are peaking due to the lack of homes to rent. In few years the rent increased over 60% forcing people to share houses or to move out from the city centre.

Protest against Airbnb in Dublin

Although it is a serious problem, the number of full homes and apartments listed in August 2019 was 11 and in August 2020 was 10. Numbers that would not solve the house crisis in Dublin.