Nashville Tours Analysis

First, a note on the interesting distributions

Assumptions

• Bachelor/Bachelorette tours are assumed to be private
• Bike tours are assumed to be public
• Tours without ‘Booking Lead Time’ and ‘Total Bookings’ values for the same tour month, day, and time are removed. These tours have an average capacity of 0.0, and possibly represent cancelled tours
• There were inconsistencies (data integrity issues) with the supplied ‘Summary’ statistics from the original dataset. I ignored these, and calculated my own based on the clean data subsetted by the particular time period and tour type of interest
• Without knowing specific dates (particularly year), I cannot make inferences based on iso-weeks. The overall conclusions from the weekly data set resemble annual, monthly, and day-of-week conclusions, so I omit weekly data analysis
• Tour capacities and booking lead times are the most interesting random variables in the dataset. In order to determine the appropriate measure of central tendency (mean, median, mode), I inspect the distributions:

K-density plots to examine the shape of distribution for Monthly Tour Capacities and Booking Lead Times

Monthly Tour Capacities k-density plot

Takeaways

• The tour capacity (by type) k-densities show that with the exception of Bike tours - which is uniformly distributed at 100% capacity from a small sample size - all other tour types are highly left-skewed. This means that the median - as opposed to the mean - is a better measure of central tendency
• Smaller tour capacities are generally distributed throughout off-season months

Monthly Booking Lead Time k-density plot

Takeaways

• Monthly Booking lead times are right skewed
• Again, the median is a better measure of central tendency for this random variable

Annual Total Bookings vs. Total Events - entire sample

Summary Statistics

• Note: Annual data is calculated by summation of monthly data

Annual Takeaways

• Broadway tours are the most popular, follwed by Midtown, SoBro, Brewery, Bachelor(ette), and Bike
• Bookings outnumber events in all tour Types except Bachelor(ette) and Bike

Annual Median Capacities & Booking Lead Times (in days) - entire sample

Annual Takeaways

• The median private tour is at 100 percent capacity, while the median public tour is slightly less
• The median private tour is booked between 29 and 57 days in advance, while the median public tour is booked between 4 and 28 days in advance
• Assumption: all Bachelor(ette) Tours are private, all Bike Tours are public

Annual Bookings by Departure Time

Annual Takeaways

• Effectively uniformly distributed
• Most popular tour time (mode of the distribution) is 7:30pm, followed by 2:15pm and 4:00pm
• In general, departure times are not highly correlated with median capacities or booking lead times
• The 6:30pm departure time is the most popular tour time with 100% Median Capacity, followed by 4:45pm, 3:30pm, and 10:45am. I would add additional tours at these times

Day of the Week Analysis

Summary Statistics

Total Bookings vs. Total Events - by Day of Week

Day-of-Week Takeaways

• As expected, Saturday is the busiest day of the week, followed by Friday and Sunday
• Bookings outnumber events on all days, reflecting the annual results

Median Capacity and Median Booking Lead Time - by Day of Week

Day-of-Week Takaways

• The median private tour is fully booked on all days except Sunday
• The median public tour increases capacity as the weekend approaches, and peaks on Saturday
• Reflecting the annual data, private tours are booked well in advance of public tours

Broadway Multi-Day Tour Annual Metrics

Examine the multi-day Broadway tours that are offered as both Public and Private: Monday-Wednesday, Sunday-Wednesday, and Thursday-Saturday. Single-day tours are excluded

Multi-Day Tour Takeaways

• Intuitively, Thursday-Saturday Broadway tours are the most popular, are offered the most, have the highest median capacity, and are booked the furthest in advance
• Public bookings outnumber private bookings while private events outnumber public events
• Median private capacities are similar to public capacities
• Private events are booked well in advance of public events

Monthly Analysis

Summary Statistics

Monthly Takaways

• Bookings increase for both Broadway and Midtown between January and May
• It appears that patrons substitute Midtown for Broadway in June
• The Nashville Airbnb Monthly Median rental price per night mirrors Midtown total bookings, with a spike in June. A pearson correlation test shows that the two variables have a correlation of 0.75, with a p-value of 0.005. This allows us to reject the null hypothesis of no correlation at a less than 1% significance level (strong positive correlation)
• Broadway tours and the Nashville Airbnb Monthly Median rental price per night have a (pearson) correlation of 0.67, with a p-value of 0.02 (also strong positive correlation)
• Both Broadway and Midtown monthly bookings generally follow the Nashville average monthy temperature

Median Booking Lead Time By Month

Monthly Takaways

• Total monthly bookings and total booking lead times for tours other than Broadway and Midtown (Bachelor(ette), Bike, Brewery, and SoBro) don’t follow the same monthly distribution as Broaday and Midtown
• The ‘other’ tours slightly mirror Tennessee hotel tax revenue and temperature, but not median monthly Airbnb price per night
• No interesting inference from median capacities
• September appears to be the Bachelor/Bachelorette party month

Conclusions

• Monthly tour capacity distributions are left-skewed, and monthly booking lead time distributions are right-skewed. Thus, the median is the best measure of central tendency for both variables
• For nearly all tours in all time periods examined, total bookings exceed total events, and private median capacities and booking lead times exceed public
• Additional tours should be added that depart at 6:30pm, 4:45pm, 3:30pm, and 10:45am
• Weekend (including Friday) tours are the most popular, as are tours during the summer months
• Broadway patrons appear to substitute towards Midtown tours in the month of June, which is supported by the Nashville Airbnb Median monthly price per night data
• Monthly Airbnb data is highly correlated with Broadway and Midtown total bookings, as well as with Nashville average monthly temperature
• September is the most popular Bachelor and Bachelorette party month

References

• Inside Airbnb - Adding data to the debate. Web. http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html. Accessed October 9, 2017
• National Weather Service Forecast Office, Nashville, TN - ‘Climate Normals & Extremes for Various Middle Tennesses Locations.’ Web. http://w2.weather.gov/climate/local_data.php?wfo=oxh. Accessed October 9, 2017
• Tennessee hotel tax revenue. Tennessee Department of Revenue - Statistics and Collections. Web. https://www.tn.gov/revenue/topic/statistics-and-collections. Accessed October 9, 2017