The recent Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically damaged the short term rental housing industry around the world, with platforms like Airbnb being especially affected. Airbnb is a community built on sharing; it is an online marketplace which allows for people to rent out properties and rooms to guests. The online platform earns profit by taking a percentage of the cost of every booking as commission. 

In response to the global medical emergency, many country leaders have taken drastic actions to combat the spread of the disease. These include shutting down borders, halting travel, implementing stay-at-home orders, and strongly encouraging social distancing practices. The desired effect is a reduction in the number of people being infected by the virus and easing the pressure on their healthcare system. The number of travellers has significantly decreased around the world, leaving a large number of short term rental units vacant. Many hosts were left distraught when Airbnb announced the decision to allow guests to cancel bookings for trips starting before May 31 with a full refund due to the virus outbreak. According to The Guardian, the effects of the pandemic on travel are likely to extend beyond the date that governments plan on lifting movement restrictions. Empty bookings have been reported throughout the entire summer season which is usually when hotels and short-term property rentals see a peak in bookings. AirDNA has analyzed that bookings in some cities have fallen by a staggering amount of 96%. For many hosts, this is their main source of income as they have built up a property of portfolios that rely on the stream of guests booking through AirBnb (The Guardian, 2020). The collapse in the short-term rental market has seen some hosts convert their properties into traditional long-term rental options. This can be seen in a variety of major cities like Dublin, where there has been a 64% increase in listings of one/two-bedroom properties since the start of March (Irish Examiner, 2020). 

Airbnb has responded to the crisis promising to reimburse hosts for 25% of what they would have been paid under their cancellation policies for reservations between 14 March and 31 May (The Guardian, 2020). Airbnb Canada has asked the federal government for multiple tax breaks to help short-term rental hosts make up their lost income from cancelled bookings as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. Many critics are skeptical of this proposal as it gives the corporate company a break from not foreseeing the consequence. They argue that Canadian taxpayers should not bail out Airbnb hosts. As an alternative, hosts who are no longer getting bookings should shift their properties/units into the long term rental market as Vancouver is in dire need of long term rentals (CTV BC news, 2020). 

In this study, we use GIS to perform an exploratory analysis on COVID-19’s effect on the short-term rental industry in Vancouver using data from Airbnb. We intend to find general patterns of changes in available listings which may provide some insight as to how hosts have been impacted by the coronavirus. Outputs from our analysis will visualize densities of Airbnb listings between October 2019 and April 2020 via hotspot analysis along with data presenting the change over time.