When to visit and where to stay in Seattle

24 Jun 2021

Introduction

After over a full-year of lockdown in 2020, travelers like myself are getting ready to adventure new places again from big cities and beautiful state/national parks in summer 2021. A most-recent the Wall Street Journal post showed national parks are overcrowded, and similar trends are happening in major cities.

It raises questions from travelers like me, “How should I plan my vacation to avoid crowds? When is the hot/peak season?” This is true even before the pandemic.

Airbnb is one of many travelers’ preferred choices when booking tourist destinations. It has generated huge amount of data consisting of listings and visitor reviews over the last decade. Analyzing these datasets can help us answer questions similar to the above, and many more.

In this medium post, I used Seattle Airbnb Open Data to take a closer look at trends in vacation rental market in the Seattle area.

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When to visit Seattle?

As a traveler, I am interested in what are the busiest time to visit Seattle. This can help me to plan my vacation to avoid too much crowd during peak seasons.

Figure 1. Number of visitors to Seattle booked through Airbnb from 2013 to 2015.

Figure 1 shows the number of visitors to Seattle booked through Airbnb from 2013 to 2015. We can see that, from January — December for a given year, most traveler visit Seattle during summer time, especially in the month of August.

To get a more clear idea on the busiest time to visit Seattle, Figure 2 shows the fluctuation around yearly average for visitors for the same time period.

Figure 2. Fluctuation in number of visitors to Seattle booked through Airbnb from 2013 to 2015.

Green bars indicate the number of visitors are above annual average. Otherwise, that month is represented by red bar.

It is clear that the busiest times of the year to visit Seattle is from June to October. In particular, for the month of August, the number of visitors is 70 to 80% higher than annual average. Summer — early Fall is the peak season to visit Seattle. This makes a lot of sense as the temperature during these time in Seattle ranges from 60 F to 70 F, while there is fewer rainfalls.

Using this Airbnb open data, it is also found that, for the year 2016, average price spike across all Airbnb listings in Seattle area from non-peak to peak season is: 7.94%.

Using these information, as a traveler, the best time to visit Seattle is early Summer (June) and mid-Fall (October) to avoid crowds and pay less for the Airbnb stay.

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Does new Airbnb listings meet demand from Airbnb visitors to Seattle?

The answer is Yes!

It was found that both new Airbnb listings and total Airbnb visitors to Seattle show upward trends (Figure 3). In particular, growths in both new listings and visitors show drastic increase since 2013. More interestingly, they are in sync with one another, indicating the vacation rental listings hosted on Airbnb platform is constantly meeting new demands generated by visitors.

Figure 3. Trends of new Airbnb listings and total Airbnb visitors to Seattle.

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There are many choices! Then where to stay in Seattle?

There are many new listings each year on Airbnb in Seattle, the next question comes naturally when booking a stay, which neighborhood should I stay?

For this reason, we are going to explore the vibes for each neighborhood, and feelings/experiences for Airbnb listed properties in that neighborhood from previous guests.

There are 127 neighborhoods (retrieved from wikipedia, 2021). Out of those, there are 16 major neighborhood groups, which we will talk about today.

Figure 4. Neighborhood group vibes in the Seattle area based on hosts’ descriptions.

Figure 4 shows the top five positive vibes and top five negative vibes (if any) for each neighborhood group. Based on the top five positive vibes, most neighborhood groups shared similar vibes such as “great”, “beautiful”, and “easy”. Some of the neighborhood groups also have special vibes, such as “amazing” for Ballard, “safe” for Interbay and Lake city, and “peaceful” for Magnolia.

Figure 5. Feelings for the listed property in each neighborhood group from visitors’ review on Airbnb.

Figure 5 shows the top five positive feelings and top five negative feelings (if any) for the listed property in each neighborhood group. Guests enjoyed their vacation rental properties during their stays in all neighborhood groups, with comment sentimental feelings, such as “great”, “comfortable”, “clean”, “nice”, and “easy”.

Going back to the question, where to stay at Seattle? I would say, all neighborhood groups showed significantly higher level of positive vibes than the level of negative vibes. In addition, past guests’ reviews also indicated Airbnb listed properties are great places to stay in each neighborhood group. I would say this question comes down to individual’s personal preferences and price/affordability.

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Conclusion

Today, we used the Seattle Airbnb Open Data to answer some key questions for travelers who plan to visit Seattle.

• The busiest times of the year (peak season) to visit Seattle is from June to October, and on average there is a 7.94% increase in Airbnb rental price in Seattle area from non-peak to peak season.

• New Airbnb listings and total Airbnb visitors to Seattle show upward trends from 2009 to 2016. Vacation rental market was booming during this time period.

• Neighborhood groups in Seattle area show significantly higher level of positive vibes over negative vibes. In addition, past guests’ reviews also indicated Airbnb listed properties are “great” places to stay in each neighborhood group.

Opinions indicated here are based on my own views and analyses on Seattle Airbnb Open Data, for the purpose demonstrating data-driven analytics.

To see more about this analysis, please direct to my Github repository here.

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Acknowledgements

Graphing ideas inspired by Vince Gacutan, https://medium.com/swlh/where-to-stay-in-seattle-wa-32c6434b4198