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UK: A new report has given a detailed breakdown of Airbnb’s growth in London.
UK: A new report has given a detailed breakdown of Airbnb’s growth in London.
Published by Colliers International, Hotelschool The Hague and AirDNA, the report says the average daily rate achieved by Airbnb in London during 2015 was £115, compared to £178 for hotels.
It claims that 7.6 per cent of overnight stays in London were in Airbnb properties in December 2015, up from 2.8 per cent in January 2015.
Around half the listings were private homes, accounting for 38 per cent of the nights booked on the site. The rest were from professional hosts with multiple listings. The report said there were 42,559 homes rented out by a landlord with multiple properties, roughly double the number of homes that are built in a typical year in the capital.
Five London boroughs – Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Hackney- accounted for more than half of the two million Airbnb bookings in the capital last year, according to a new report.
Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Camden, Kensington & Chelsea and Hackney are identified in Airbnb – Impact and Outlook for London as “hotbeds of Airbnb activity”. These boroughs also account for the majority of the city’s Airbnb supply, with almost four million listings.
Total revenue recorded by Airbnb hosts last year was £231 million, while hotels recorded £6.5 billion. The growth in Airbnb nights is set against a backdrop of falling hotel demand, revenue and occupancy in London.
Marc Finney, head of hotels & resorts consulting at Colliers International, said: “An interesting finding of the report is Airbnb’s ability to perform even in the notoriously slow ‘off-season’. Our research showed that demand steadily increased throughout the year, and although we see a much faster increase in the summer months, this demand continues to increase outside of peak season. This demonstrates that Airbnb does not seem to be impacted by seasonality in the market place, which gives it a distinct advantage as this is not something that we are seeing as much in the hotels sector.”
Jeroen Oskam at Hotelschool The Hague highlighted the impact of the professional landlords: “Multi-listers account for more than half of all Airbnb listings in London. When you consider the characteristics of these units and their spatial distribution, it is clear that these rentals are primarily a commercial activity; the uncontrolled expansion of which is not only harmful to the hotel market, but also to city neighbourhoods and the housing market.”
Airbnb claims that “scraped” data, like that used to compile the Colliers report, where an algorithm downloads all the listings available from the public website, is inaccurate.
A spokesman for Airbnb said: “Countless experts agree Airbnb is complementary to the existing hospitality industry and helps more people to travel, which is good news for everyone. We want to be good partners to London and we are always investigating new ways to work with policymakers to promote responsible home sharing that makes communities stronger.”
