At Airbnb, our supply comes from hosts who decide to list their spaces on our platform. Unlike traditional hotels, these spaces are not all interchang

From Data to Insights: Segmenting Airbnb’s Supply

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2024-11-26 01:00:05

At Airbnb, our supply comes from hosts who decide to list their spaces on our platform. Unlike traditional hotels, these spaces are not all interchangeable units in a building that are available to book year-round. Our hosts are people, with different earnings objectives and schedule constraints — leading to different levels of availability to host. Understanding these differences is a key input into how we develop our products, campaigns, and operations.

Over the years, we’ve created various ways to measure host availability, developing “features” that capture different aspects of how and when listings are available. However, these features provide an incomplete picture when viewed in isolation. For example, a ~30% availability rate could indicate two very different scenarios: a host who only accepts bookings on weekends, or a host whose listing is only available during a specific season, such as summer.

By combining multiple features, segmentation allows us to create discrete categories that represent the different availability patterns of hosts.