Boston vs. Seattle… MLB? Nah…it’s Airbnb!

Boston and Seattle. Two very popular places to visit. Large cities on the water. How different can they be?

I won’t be answering that question today. I can just leave it at: one is on the West Coast and one is on the East Coast. I am capitalizing both because I have lived on both coasts, and want to pay them equal respect!

My question today is…how different can they Airbnb? Well, looking at Airbnb data, they are quite different indeed.

Behold! The 15 most expensive neighborhoods for Airbnbs in Seattle and Boston…just how much a night does it cost (by average)?

Fig. 1: A horizontal bar chart showing the 30 most expensive Airbnb neighborhoods in Boston and Seattle and what the average prices for a one night stay are. Boston dominates.  

I started this project by examining the 15 most expensive neighborhoods in terms of average Airbnb prices of staying one night in Boston and Seattle between 2009-2016. Like the Red Sox baseball team, the red stripes represent the Boston values, while Mariner blue stripes represent…Seattle.

14 out of the most expensive 16 neighborhoods were in Boston. And by the looks of the names of neighborhoods…finding a place on the water whether it be the Atlantic or Pacific is a little bit pricier. If it has waterfront or bay in the name, you better batter up and pay.

So what kind of reviews are the 30 most expensive Airbnb neighborhoods getting as we compare Seattle to Boston? Let’s look…

Fig. 2: Those same 30 neighborhoods from Fig. 1 but comparing the Airbnb review score averages. Seattle dominates.

It looks like when it comes to reviews…Seattle has the better ratings in comparison to Boston. 11 of the 12 best reviewed expensive Airbnb neighborhoods are in Seattle! The only exception seems to be Boston’s Leather District which is in the Top 3 for both expense and reviews. Spicy…

I mean pricey, sorry. Named appropriately due to the dominance of the leather industry in the late 19th century. Fascinating.

So not only is Seattle better reviewed, it is also more reviewed…which made me wonder…well…where did Airbnb originate and when?

By the miracle of technology (or just the usefulness of Wikipedia) I was able to find out that Airbnb was started in 2008….in San Francisco. My guess is that the craze hit Seattle and got more established before it hit all the way out east in Boston.

The total number of reviews is actually 84,829 in Seattle and 68,208 in Boston.

So how different are Seattle and Boston? At the time of this data (2016) Seattle had a population of around 726,000 and Boston had 672,800. Pretty similar so far… But in terms of space the cities take up? Seattle takes up 84 square miles to Boston’s 48.3 square miles. Yikes…

So in terms of World Series…Boston’s 9 titles make it about nearly 1 World Series title per just over 5.3 square miles. That’s much better than none for all 84 square miles of Seattle. Oh well, can’t win them all!

Maybe NFL comparisons would be less of a sore subject for Seattle. I mean when have the Patriots and Seahawks ever played in the Super Bow….oh wait…Let’s just end it here!

References:

1. Title Image: https://www.yahoo.com/travel/super-bowl-smackdown-boston-vs-seattle-109371558482.html

2. Seattle/Boston info: https://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/seattle_wa/boston_ma/people

3. https://www.quora.com/Is-Seattle-bigger-than-Boston-Is-it-how-much-bigger

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb