What the research says actually moves the price

What happened

There is a method called hedonic pricing. It breaks a listing's price into components — bedrooms, bathrooms, location, reviews — and estimates how much of the price each component accounts for. It came from property research and started being applied to Airbnb in the mid-2010s.

Take one representative study: Gibbs, Guttentag and three co-authors, published in the Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing in 2018, analysing 15,716 listings across five Canadian cities.

How to read these numbers

Before the findings, one thing. A hedonic coefficient says "listings with this feature are priced higher on average" — not "add this feature and your price goes up." It measures what the market is charging, not what your renovation will return.

The two overlap often, but they are not the same. A place with two bathrooms tends to be larger and in a better neighbourhood; the coefficient absorbs that too. So use these numbers for direction, not to justify a construction budget.

What it means for you

A few findings recur across the literature.

1. Bathrooms carry more price than bedrooms

In hedonic models, one more bathroom is associated with roughly 18% higher price, one more bedroom with roughly 13%. And past three bedrooms the effect drops off noticeably.

For most hosts, adding a bathroom is not on the table — you are renting, or the plumbing will not allow it, or the work would touch your registration. So this reads less as a renovation argument and more as an argument for describing what you already have:

• Half-baths, shower-only rooms and sink-only spaces often go unlisted
• Listings with two bathrooms are sometimes entered as one
• Expanding from four guests to six returns less than hosts expect, especially past the third bedroom

2. More reviews does not mean a higher rate

One of the study's findings is that listings with more reviews are priced lower, not higher. That is very likely correlation rather than cause — cheaper listings book more, and more bookings accumulate more reviews.

It does not mean reviews are worthless. Reviews do their work somewhere other than price: whether you get clicked in search, whether a first-time guest completes a booking. It is only the claim "collect reviews and you can charge more" that does not hold up.

3. A bad review weighs about twice a good one

Across several studies, negative reviews move price roughly twice as much as positive ones, and complaints about facilities and location most of all.

In practical terms, complaints fall into three kinds:

Kind	Example	What you can do
Fixable	Hot water, aircon noise, bedding, water pressure	Fix it. Usually cheaper than a price cut
Not fixable, but disclosable	No lift, stairs, street parking only	Put it in the listing. Guests who knew do not complain about it
Neither	Construction next door, neighbourhood noise	State the period, or adjust the price for it

Removing one cause of bad reviews beats earning one more good review. The middle row especially — it costs nothing but a sentence.

What these studies do not tell you

• The right price for your listing. Coefficients are market averages; your calendar is your evidence
• Causation. As above
• Today. Many samples are several years old

So the value here is not "charge this much." It is narrowing down where to put your effort so it lands on the side that moves price at all.

Three things to do this week

1. Collect facility and location complaints from recent reviews and fix one. Water temperature, noise, bedding, parking directions — start with whatever repeats.
2. Check that your bathroom count is entered correctly. Half-baths and shower-only rooms are the usual omissions.
3. Disclose one thing you cannot fix. No lift, the number of stairs, no parking. Guests who knew in advance do not take stars for it.

---

Gibbs, Guttentag, Gretzel, Morton & Goodwill, "Pricing in the sharing economy: a hedonic pricing model applied to Airbnb listings," Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing 35(1), 46–56 (2018); 15,716 listings across five Canadian cities. Coefficients vary by sample and city across studies. This piece describes correlations and does not promise that any action increases revenue. Checked September 23, 2026.