Airbnb Bonanza - huge rise in short let property numbers

Figures publicised in a new House of Commons report suggests there’s been a huge rise in the number of short lets in almost every part of the UK over the past five years.

The exception is Scotland, where draconian restrictions now exist on individuals letting out their homes, rooms or separate properties via short-let platforms.

VisitBritain, the government-funded national tourism agency, publishes monthly reports on short-term rentals, based on data collected by Lighthouse, a hospitality industry data and consultancy company that tracks short let rental listings worldwide. 

Lighthouse tracks listings on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo and TripAdvisor to maintain its own database, and removes duplicate listings when they are spotted. 

The latest Lighthouse report - cited in a House of Commons library document just released - says there are around 451,000 available short-term rental properties on these platforms in February 2024 in Great Britain, an increase of 31% on February 2019. Of these properties, around 370,000 were in England. 

These figures include entire properties, private rooms and shared rooms. These properties may be in use as short-term lets some of the time and as someone’s main residence the rest of the time. 

London - 82,000 properties; 11% rise from 2019 to February 2024

South West - 81,000; 33% rise

South East - 52,000; 38% rise

Scotland - 46,000; 6% fall

North West - 39,000; 55% rise

Wales - 35,000; 33% rise

East of England - 32,000; 55% rise

Yorkshire and Humber - 29,000; 57% rise

West Midlands - 21,000; 72% rise

East Midlands - 20,000; 65% rise

North East - 14,000; 68% rise

Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics, also quoted in the Commons library report, show that in England there were around 9.9m nights spent in short-term let accommodation in July to September 2023. Most of these nights were occupied by visitors from the UK (62%). 

The South West had the highest proportion of nights spent in short-term lets relative to population, followed by Scotland. For the South West, the majority of visitors were domestic tourists (78%) whereas for Scotland they were almost evenly split (52% international visitors and 48% domestic).