There is a new world movement called collaborative economy or sharing economy, enabling social technologies defined as web-based platforms allowing consumers to engage in monetized exchanges through peer-to-peer-based for services or temporary access to goods.
One of the leading examples of this new collaborative economy is Airbnb, an online leading platform that enables people to list, find and rent their vacation homes for a processing fee. Nowadays this online marketplace has over 1.5 million listings in 34 thousand cities and 191 countries and it’s a newcomer big competitor in the lodging industry.
Just in Barcelona around 15 thousand people are listing their flats or un-occupy rooms at their flats but one of the toughest decisions when people upload their flats is ¿how much do I should receive for the renting of my flat? ¿Which should be the best price for a night at my apartment?
This isn’t an easy question, it depends on a lot of factors and it’s the main stressful inquiry the user should answer to list their apartment to the point that a lot of users that just don’t know which price to charge just abandoned the uploading process and the application.
In order to reduce the user stress and promote more accurate and fair lodging prices we design and develop a new Airbnb price recommender based on the flat characteristics.
In following sections you could see and understand how we develop this application, its technical characteristics and its importance reducing user stress and recommending accurate prices for their apartments.
It’s also important to point out that the same process followed here could be applied to a lot other applications where the price plays a stressful role for the users as for example: ebay, drivy, blablacar, wallapop, olx, between others.
