TEAM
Airbnb
Zheyu Ni, Muhammad Reza Averly, Ricky Oropeza, Shubhrika Ahuja, Praveen Shahani
How to make money in LA with Airbnb? Being a host has never been easy since they need to provide a quality experience for guests while considering the profit margin. We aim to alleviate their burdens by streamlining the decision-making process. We explore and analyze tens of thousands of listings in LA for insights. Then, we combined structural modeling and machine learning to customize pricing for new listings based on property locations, features, ownership, and substitution between nearby listings to maximize the host’s profit. The structural model helps capture supply & demand dynamics and machine learning helps capture the consumer consideration set (hotspot market). We also use machine learning for price prediction to utilize rich features better. Furthermore, we recommend areas with the best rate of return for potential hosts and suggest possible amenities to become popular in Airbnb.